“Well I got a few more books too… most of them are from the “Appreciating Caribbean Heritage” display at the library. I cleared it out.” I say pulling book after book out of my backpack and placing them on the floor of his office.

He laughs and says, “That’s great!”

The other items were great too, a book about American Historical Myths and fifteen speeches that shaped America’s identity. I’m giddy to tell you that I’m going to Washington D.C. for the very first time. I’ve been wanting to go since I was Abraham Lincoln in fifth grade. I remember the school was offering a trip to D.C. I went to an informational meeting with my mom. I was guessing it couldn’t cost more than $100… since it was a school trip and all. I think the price was $1,026. That’s what I remember. I also remember thinking, “Pshh it should have just been a million dollars at that price.”

I don’t know if I get it or if people get it when I explain how little money we had as kids. It was an embarrassingly small amount of money, I’ll tell you that. We made do and hid it well. Feels like now in a way. I wonder how much we’re all doing that. Probably most considering the state of the country. Anyway, I’m a bit overwhelmed with things (politics, money, the state of technology, the economy, the healthcare system) at the moment, but I watched Project Hail Mary last night, 10/10 recommend that movie. It kicks ass and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Back to D.C…. I AM FINALLY GOING for the very first time, at the end of September!

And I’m going for $11! I used my mileage points and + $11 for my ticket and I’m staying with family. I heard too that all the museums are free and met a couple who came to my yoga class yesterday who are going to get me into yoga for free and told me where to run and to go to the arboretum and the whole thing feels like a big gift from the universe.

One line I liked from the movie last night is that one of the top scientists says “God Willing” to which, forever dreamy Ryan Gossling asks, “You believe in God?” and Stratt, the scientists, she says, “It’s better than the alternative.”

My point? No point. I’m grateful for this trip to DC. I am elated to go and to see things. I’m elated to feel the vibe and to understand a bit more. I prefer to keep my head in the sand when it comes to politics, I find the quiet soothing, but lately it seems like I keep being woken up by various noises that I can no longer ignore.

My boyfriend, a man who spent ten years working for the US Forest Service has for as long as I’ve known him wanted to yell “boo!” at the capital. So here we go! It’s also his brother’s birthday and a little family get together, so that will be fun.

Today I’m recovering from a cold or something. I was packed into a plane with two hundred others and watched as the flight attendant diligently took out her tissue and wiped her nose over and over with it. Even my nine year old gets the way things work, “Can you please wait to see if it’s COVID until we get home? I don’t want to be stuck here another week.” Wow, so much to unpack there dude.

We talked about it, we’re still working on our relationship. I told the kids about an epiphany I had today. During our marriage their dad and I took a marriage workshop which did help in many ways. They told us that during regular conversations we should be saying fourteen positive things to one another or fourteen positive interactions, a sweet look, a pat on the butt, a nice guesture or word for every one negative interaction or comment. They said too, that during fights, that number should still be five positive to one negative. We both scoffed at this at the time and still find it shocking. We joked in the car today that that’s perhaps why we weren’t the best together. Wouldn’t all that niceness ruin the fun of fighting?!

We get along much better now and so my ex invited me to play tennis with he and the kids today. We hadn’t seen each other in ten days and it was a nice gesture. The epiphany I had today was when I arrived to his house and saw my daughter in long leggings and a t-shirt was that I needed to employ the same marriage lesson to all my relationships. My instinct was to greet her and say, “Hey! It’s too hot for those leggings, go change into tennis shorts.” But post-epiphany I decided to hug her and kiss her and squeeze her again and tell her how cute she was and how glad I was to see her and I realized then too that this was all much more important to say to her anyway.

And so, moving forward, as the very first lesson of yoga: ahimsa, non-violence. The non-violence begins within. Non-violence in word and thought to self, in speech to self, in reflection on self, in doing things that cause pain or harm to the body, and then, outward with the same. Ahimsa toward those you love, fourteen positives for every “correction” or “comment”. We’re all doing our best out here and this shit is hard.

You’re beautiful, you’re wonderful, you matter, people love you, people miss you, people admire you and adore you and people want you to stick around and to keep kicking ass (gently and playfully of course).

Love loves loves,

Amy

Anyway, I clap every time. And then the man organizing our suitcases for us in hopes of a tip, the airport shuttle, the rental car, the white cows, the white horses, the fields, the travelers on long walks down the long road. The fences made of live trees, the tiendas selling mostly cerveza, the humidity, the heat, the bathroom that’s “too dirty” to use according to my daughter.

And pavement gives way to gravel and we slow more. The road, a mix of bicyclists, families of four on motorcycles, a man being pushed in a wheelchair, kids walking, potholes surprising, speedbumps or “reductors” here and there to really send our hearts racing as we lurch delicately, the kids heads hanging and bobbing, as they finally find sleep after the red eyes.

And then the final push, the steep hill, half pavement, half boulders, the gutter extending fully into the road, “hm, risk tipping the car or drive directly over that seven inch rock?”

We arrive. I wanna throw up it’s so hot. I wanna cry I’m so hungry and tired. I do neither and push through feeding the kids and myself, brushing teeth and cuddling in newly air conditioned bedrooms. I apologize for my transgressions, the rushing, the fighting. I wish to do better.

We sleep. I awake reborn and refreshed. We’re in COSTA RICA BABY!

We splash, we eat, we bathe, we soak, we lick, we squeal, we sing, we dance, we get sand deep into every nook and cranny.

We sleep again.

A man pours viscous blue liquid into the infinity pool and sweeps the deck.

I write, she plays guitar, he reads, he watercolors. The fans blow warm tropical air across our tanned skin and the heat presses us gently into the surfaces we rest on.

We’ve come to a full stop.

I took a writing class this spring and have been writing privately much more often. Turns out the main therapeutic benefits of writing come from the painful, angry, charred, and horrid parts of self and memory. Healing comes from writing about these things freely, completely, honestly and with the expectation that no one will read your words. Like thread from my fingers I let the pain spin out, the mess within, now linear on paper, like sutures, a thought, space, a thought, space. I go within and pull from where it hurts, examine it, make it into a word and let it go into the paper.

And as if returning from an exquisite nap, I look up from my writing lighter, calmer, and feeling more spaciousness for the present moment, the day ahead, myself, and for those around me.

And as for now, I’ve gone back to the future. I moved back into a home I lived in three years ago. It made practical sense to move back in. I own this home. I was renting it out during my divorce. When rental prices were more than my mortgage and I couldn’t stomach moving the kids AGAIN in a year or so, I took the decisive action to move back home.

I did not fully grasp the impact of moving back into a place I have already lived. The first few days were hardest as my mind raced with memories good and bad of my time here at home. I wrote a lot in this house. I wrote messily in my journal and I wrote prolifically to an ex who never much responded. I wrote in sharpie across my bedroom walls, in chalk on the sidewalks, in songs in the basement.

There was a radical transformation happening in my life in this house three years ago. I wanted out of my marriage. I wanted out of my career I’d worked so hard for. I wanted to be with my ex or to feel like I did when I was with him. I wanted to feel better. Something was really off and I couldn’t put my finger on it. No one else could either.

And so I wrote and I dissected myself, my feelings, my thoughts, my actions, my past. I wrote and I cried and I explained and I created and danced angrily across the dining room floor and shook my brain and hips wildly in my bedroom with the music blasting and my door closed.

A psychiatrist told me I had a “mood disorder,” but couldn’t explain why he said that. An ex called me “devastatingly delusional.” My husband at the time asked if I was experiencing “psychosis.” Another boyfriend told me he talked to his friends and they were pretty sure I was “bipolar.”

Meanwhile, my therapist assured me that there was “no mental pathology” going on. One of my best friends, a psychiatric nurse practitioner told me that I wasn’t crazy, but that the men in my life and the relationships between them and me were “crazy-making.” Another friend told me, “You know these men are projecting onto you, right?” They all had one thing in common: they were not getting from me what they desired.

But still, the name calling and labeling from these men stuck in deep like a sword in my self concept. I saw myself through their eyes over and over again until I too saw myself through this distorted lens: A once devoted and smart mother and wife who now had lost it.

She expresses her insanity by dancing wildly in the kitchen, by craving female companionship over male requests of possession and submission, by having the audacity to create a sustainable, non-toxic, career that aligned with her values and passions.

I wanted to be disentangled. Free. I was dissatisfied; deeply so with them and with my life.

Transformation was clear, but what was I becoming and why?

In my first year away from here I moved into a place by myself with a room for my kids to share. I spent 354 nights of the year alone in my bed (I counted). At first I worked full time and supported myself and my kids financially with my six figure career. Then, I dramatically quit my career and started yoga school. I found strength and community there. I felt lovable again. I felt seen wholly. I stopped feeling pathologized.

In my second year away I asked my husband to move back in and we tried to move to Puerto Rico. I wanted to really make our dreams come true; to stop with the hum drum and go for it, like we did in our twenties. He obliged and got a job there, made plans for us, started working there. Thing was, I fell in love with someone new at the same time. My husband and I had long had an open marriage and dated other people intermittently. So in love and committed to our children and our shared life we were that we tried literally everything to keep our relationship afloat.

I said I wanted to date again and he said, “Thank God!” He said he could tell I needed it, needed something more, something else and that it would be good for me; that he wanted to see me happier.

And so I met up with a stranger from the internet and we hit it off. I hugged him at the end of our first spontaneous date and didn’t want to let go. For months I found myself falling asleep on his chest. Something about his heartbeat, the warmth beneath his shirt, was just right and completely soothing. I think he wanted to make out, I know he did, and there was this girl from the internet who simply wanted to fall asleep on his chest. I slept head on his lap through our first movie together in the theater. My body liked his body and I couldn’t explain it. I found respite in him. A calm in the storm of me and my life. He’s the yin to my yang and I tend to fight the yin, prefer the yang usually.

And so to my husband I proposed a platonic relationship. There was a lot of yang, a lot of yelling, and door slamming and eventually the dust settled and he quietly moved out, Puerto Rico was cancelled, and I, still spinning, put my belongings in his garage, my body in my new boyfriend’s apartment, and my heart bounced between the two for a while. I flew to Japan and Bali and immersed myself in the abundance and beauty of nature and friendships and yoga. I missed my kids desperately.

I returned home with jet lag so bad it turned out I was pregnant. I didn’t want another baby right then; My things in a garage, my income: none, my kids still little and enough for my full heart. I ordered an abortion pill from the internet and quietly bled until I could barely see or walk. My boyfriend came to me and saved me with salty potatoes and citrus-filled ice water and the soft warmth and soothing beating of his steady heart. Dr. Mario helped too. He let me sit for hours, matching colors and stacking pills until my body and spirit had recovered.

And in the third year away, my boyfriend and I moved in together. Found a small house of our own to rent. The kids shared a room and we lived mostly in the backyard. Never got around to getting an outdoor table and meals were had on our laps in camping chairs. The kids pogo-sticked or ran in circles or water colored or read beside us as we did yoga or lifted weights. We had family over and sometimes friends. We played board games and made elaborate meals. We read a lot of Harry Potter and in the evenings when the kids were at dads, we’d play guitar and I’d sing, or we’d smoke pot and look at the stars. And I got pregnant again and then the flu at the same time. I felt so badly for so long. A surgical abortion this time and a vasectomy for my partner. It was an impossibly hard decision and we were open to a baby this time around, but ultimately, my body said no. It was too hard, something was off. I needed help.

Side by side in bed, he iced his testicles while I rested and ate and regained my strength. Spring came and I continued to grow stronger and to feel better. Mid spring notice arrived that we needed to vacate our rental. The owner was moving back in in July and we needed to be out. We were so upset. We didn’t want to move, not in summer, not yet.

And now I sit, back home, here and now, in the future and in the past where I’ve been. Reconnected now with the part of me who jostled and tore her way out of here; out of a life she knew didn’t fit and away from people who’s distorted vision of her left her feeling like an attractive nuisance.

And I have one thought: the universe is a good gift giver and I am a bad ass.

And I now know, from the last three years of women’s circles and books galore that being called crazy by men who crave and cannot have you or want more of you or for you to be smaller or bla bla bla, that being called crazy by them is commonplace. These crazy-making assertions related to my sanity felt like fire in my veins. At times I felt that fire scorching me and felt my entire being burning up. Who was I beneath all that ash?

At other times, that fire lit beneath my ass until I flew up and out. Leaving those who no longer understood or cherished me behind and finding new eyes, new lights, new beings, who would look upon me the way I knew myself to be.

I’ve come back to my future self. I’ve come back home.

In the final line of the Back to the Future series Doc Brown says to Marty:

"Your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one."

And from here where I sit, keys beneath capable fingers, I’m writing my own life story. Writing as transformation. She did it! The walls painted over now, I remember what she wrote there. I remember how line by line, she crafted a new story. A story I’m living now with the utmost gratitude and love for her.

I’m writing my own life story and it’s a good one.

Cheers and namaste!

Amy

Is it the capitalism bug, nestled under our skin. that has our brain asking, during most creative endeavors, “And how could I make that a bit zingier, a bit more MARKETABLE?!”

If we read 500 ads per day, it makes sense that our brain starts to think in terms of ads. I love playing sports, but have always had a hard time getting into, really getting into, watching sports on TV or otherwise. At a recent NBA game, I sat in the stands and asked my boyfriend, “How many ads can you see right now?” We counted and found ourselves face to face with more than fifty ads. They flashed and scrolled and bounced around so much that the tiny players below, even with their years of skill and practice, were really fighting hardest, competing first and foremost, for our attention.

I had an EEG last week and wrote a piece about the experience. I sent it to my paid subscribers only because 1) That shit is personal and 2) I believe in supporting art as art and those who support me as an artist will receive access to parts of me that are very personal and tender because they have reciprocated the effort of caring for and nurturing that aspect of me.

This isn’t an ad for that. I also support any of you becoming paid subscribers and know that support goes beyond monetary activity. I also know that I have a dream of being a paid writer and inching my way that direction is necessary for making it there.

So I had this EEG and I felt an immeasurable sense of agony during the period in which they rapid-fire flashed sequences of light into my eyes.

At one point I couldn’t take it and had to ask them to stop. My heart raced, I felt agony, I could not keep up mentally or physically with that inundation of light.

And like the refresh of my phone or computer, the rapid fire images from television and social media reels, lately, I find while using technology that my heart races, I often feel agony or another misery, and I just can’t keep up.

I’m off social media mostly. My iphone lives in the mailbox almost exclusively while I’m at home. When I’m out or driving, I use my phone to get directions, make a call, start a song, or send off an email.

I watch movies once a week on the projector in the living room mostly for the cuddles and because holy shit I didn’t realize there were three Back to the Futures and now we have to finish the third!

And I’ve been spending all my time outside or face to face with a book or a person or a fire or myself.

It’s been a trying time to say the least and today I got good news and can “return to my hobbies” as my boyfriend said.

One of the books my nose spends the most time in is my red dictionary.

I miss my red dictionary. It’s packed away with most of my things at this point. I’m moving back into the home I own this week and am thrilled to return home after some wandering.

In the red dictionary there is a definition of a luddite. Story goes in that Ned Ludd was super pissed at the invention of the washing machine, or a knitting loom. He, for one, did not think we needed such superfluous items to do things for us. He liked things the way they were! He, also, was very likely not the one doing the washing…or the knitting.

He was so upset about this new technology that he created an uprising to protest this advance in tech. Those who followed him became known as luddites. This was all going on around 1770s.

According to the internet:

Today, the word is used in two primary ways:

• The Refusal of Tech: Referring to someone who shuns modern conveniences, such as refusing to own a smartphone, use self-checkout kiosks, or adopt AI tools.

• The “Neo-Luddite” Movement: A modern philosophy that critically analyzes technology, arguing that unchecked technological advancement harms society, the environment, and human well-being.

I support both of these definitions. I believe in limiting use of modern technology and I believe that human well-being and the environment are greatly harmed by unchecked technological advancement.

And when put to the extreme of those flashing EEG lights last week I came away with this:

Let the soft light of the sun bounce off soft organic surfaces into your eyes

and the moon’s mellow glow ebb from one item at a time and back into you

and leave the flashing lights to a minimum

save yourself some agony

Foot up, still, I find my way to a computer because I process through writing. I create through writing, and I live through connection. In those moments of agony with the EEG, the thought of one thing and one thing only got me through: the faces of those I love.

That tethering of eyes to eyes, of heart to heart, of soul to soul, keeps me here.

Sweet darkness, a sanctuary.

Sweet light, a rebirth.

And the mixture of the two and the colors in between make this life worthy of our attention.

So in my minimizing tech way, and because my dog has just as much anxiety as I do, I traveled away from the city and flashing lights of the fourth to the beach this weekend. I ran on the beach barefoot for four miles and in forest for four more- gave myself a possible stress fracture of one of my right metatarsals- hence the elevated icing foot.

The running just felt so good.

It felt so good to run on the beach where the wind swept everyone and everything off. It was just me and the dog and the guy. Our feet sliding down sand dunes to find chilled soft sand beneath. Our toes gripping wet earth and finally, the thrill of the icy ocean. And we ran south with the wind behind us and I knew, with every ounce of my being, that someone, something was giving me a lift, a push. It felt like the whole world had my back. And headstrong I carved my way back north up through the raging wind and knew that I, more than anything, had my back.

Winding roots and trail we made our way back to the tent.

We cooked and ate and met the neighbors. And I laid in bed days later and said, “I’m still thinking about that wind off the ocean. It felt like it blew a lot of shit off of me that I needed to get off and it blew through me, something I really needed.”

Something like hope. Like camaraderie. Like solace.

Here are some low tech and some high tech pictures from the weekend before I go back into my luddite dugout.

Hoping to see you offline because

I’m craving more face to face.

More heart to hearts.

And more soul to soul.

Flash….. flash…..flash. I can do this.

Pure black, ten second rest.

Flash.. flash..flash..flash..flash..flash.

Pause. My heart is speeding up.

flashflashflashflashflashfl…

Read more

I mostly want to share this photo of a blossoming prickly pear cactus being pollinated by a bee.

I’ve been driving past this enormous cacti for months and this week, finally, it blossomed. I stopped and took photos yesterday and have been staring at them regularly since.

I myself feel like a prickly pear cactus, waiting to blossom. I have a tattoo in fact, unfinished, where everything but the flowers is filled in with color. It and I feel, unfinished. Not quite ready to blossom.

And I am absolutely in awe of this flower, the texture of the petals, the vibrancy of the colors.

The owners of said cacti seem to love cars. They have about five cars parked in their driveway and sideways in front of these flowers and I sneak my eyes around them to see them regularly.

And I’m not quite sure why I am unfinished.

The blossoming looks so delightful.

Perhaps I was picked on one too many times by curious grubby childlike fingers.

Perhaps the sun, scorched me once or twice.

Perhaps I gulped and felt overwhelmed by heavy rains.

And have learned to love and crave the safety of a tightly bound bud.

And the day continued and I found more blossoms.

I said something to a friend recently and he said, “That’s the most poisonous perspective on this.”

I thought, “Welcome to my mind.” Twenty five years of cycles of bleeding and I’m still rocked by the way my premenstrual brain distorts everything; contorts it all until everything feels poisonous.

When I see foxglove I see the heart, stopped. The way this plant has been used in medicine to stop the hearts of people. That’s what I know and that’s what I see. And I forget that somewhere along the line, someone figured out that small doses of this plant can help our hearts pump more efficiently. Small doses control irregular heartbeats and help our hearts work better. It is life saving for most. And only lethal in heavy doses.

And when I glance at this, that small dose into my eyes, I feel my heart calm and soothe itself.

Remembering, finally, now as I bleed, that it’s not all bad.

The touch, too much, can strangle.

The sun, too much, can burn.

The rain, too much, can drown.

But usually, soft hands, warm sun, tiny drops of rain, quench.

And so slowly, like those before me, I learn to soften and open.

My mom lives forever in pink roses.

Among other places.

And she shows me, gently.

And from afar.

How to blossom.

Happy spring, loves.

Amy

what makes you happy.”

- Lucille Ball, June 22, 1993

I implore you:

Imagine the ideal partner for you:

A connection with a friend, family member, or loved one with whom you want to connect with, talk to, and spend a LOT of time with.

Now list the qualities of that person:

1. They listen really really well.

2. They ask follow up questions to show engagement and clarify to learn more.

3. They offer similar stories and show that they understand and can relate to my experience(s).

4. They push me, kindly, gently and firmly into a better version of myself.

5. When they hear me say something unkind about myself, they say things like, “Now wait a minute. I guess I have a very specific and different perspective on this.”

6. They acknowledge that there is a deeper, younger and more ancient wisdom within them that leads them to connect and be with you and that they are in it for the long hall, with you for the long haul and you both know it.

7. They fuck with you. They fuck with you in beautiful and complex ways that push you to better know and love yourself and them all at once and you know, inherently that the stretch marks, the pull and pain of this growth, is worth it.

8. They love you unabashedly.

   Unabashedly: an adverb that means doing or saying something openly, confidently, and without apology, shame, or embarrassment. It describes someone who is completely unbothered by what others might think and fully embraces who they are or what they love.

9. They’re kind.

10. They keep the conversation going just to hear your voice.

Now list how you feel when you are with them:

1. I feel magical, like pure magnificent magic.

2. I feel beyond worthy of love and attention.

3. I feel magnetic, infatuating, fulfilling and completely and utterly satisifying to love

4. I feel held and understood

5. I feel excited, optimistic, powerful, capable, effective, efficient, and miraculous.

6. I feel engaged and hopeful. (Optimism saves lives!)

7. I feel nurtured and like they have my back.

   1. No matter how gruff they may appear at times, they show the fuck up.

8. I feel like my dreams are possible and meaningful and that the whole world will benefit from knowing and hearing from me.

9. They believe in me and my dreams

10. I feel like I have a teammate for the daily and for when the world ends.

11. I feel playful and safe to take playful “risks” allowing myself to be stupid, ridiculous, annoying, irreverent, and hilarious.

12. I feel excited about their life and excited about my life!

List the behaviors of your ideal romantic partner:

1. They turn me on like crazy, even when I’m upset with them.

2. I love the way their skin feels, their hands, their tongue, their mouth, and their eyes on me.

3. They notice me and every little thing about me. They want more and more of me, and to know me and my experience(s).

4. They have eros and passion and efficiency and are able to accomplish the things they desire.

5. They do work that fills them up and leaves them feeling eager and excited and satisfied!

6. They are in love with themselves the way I am. They can be humble about it.

7. They slow me down just right when I need it.

8. They make me wanna shake my hips, then swirl them, and then grind and grind and grind.

9. They show me when they’re starving for me!

10. They like it when I tease them first.

A friend, shade-drenched and exuberant visited my garden office yesterday. She told me the story of the Misty Fawn:

A small fawn awoke to a magnificent smell. Eager to know where it was coming from, the fawn searched all around the forest for the source of the wonderful smell. She searched high and low, and low and high, sniffed at so many trees and flowers and animals. Finally, calm, and still curious, she noticed that the smell was coming right from her own forehead.

I implore you:

1. Imagine the ideal partner for you. A connection with a friend or loved one with whom you want to connect with, talk to, and spend time with.

2. Now list the qualities of that person.

3. Now list how you feel when you are with them.

4. List the behaviors of your ideal romantic partner.

5. Now become them.

6. Enjoy!

With My Updates

How I am

I listen really really well

I ask follow up questions to show engagement and to clarify to learn more

I offer similar stories and show that I understand and can relate to others’ experience(s)

I push you, kindly, gently and firmly into a better version of yourself, if you ask for my help

When I hear you say something unkind about yourself, I say things like, “Now wait a minute I guess I have a very specific and different perspective on this”

I acknowledge that there is a deeper, younger and more ancient wisdom within me that leads me to connect and be with you

I listen to this wisdom

I know that I am in it for the long hall, with you for the long haul, and we both know it

I fuck with you I fuck with you in beautiful and complex ways that push me to better know and love myself and yourself all at once and I know, inherently that the stretch marks, the pull and pain of this growth, is worth it

I love you unabashedly

I am kind

I keep the conversation going just to hear your voice

How I feel

I feel magical, like pure magnificent magic

I feel beyond worthy of love and attention

I feel magnetic, infatuating, fulfilling and completely and utterly satisfying to love

I feel held and understood

I feel excited, optimistic, powerful, capable, effective, efficient, and miraculous

I feel engaged and hopeful

I feel nurtured and like everyone has my back

No matter how gruff I may appear at times, I show the fuck up

I feel like my dreams are possible and meaningful and that the whole world will benefit from knowing and hearing from me

I believe in me and my dreams! Amy For Class President!

I feel like I am a teammate for the daily and for when the world ends

I feel playful and safe to take playful “risks” allowing myself to be stupid, ridiculous, annoying, irreverent, and hilarious

I feel excited about your life and excited about my life!

How I am erotically, sexually, and as a romantic partner

I turn myself on like crazy, even when I’m upset with myself

I love the way my skin feels, my hands, my tongue, my mouth, and my own eyes on me

I notice myself and every little thing about me

I want more and more of me, and to know me and my experience(s) even better

I have eros and passion and efficiency and am able to accomplish the things I desire

I do work that fills me up and leaves me feeling eager and excited and satisfied!

I am in love with myself the way I am I can be humble about it

I slow myself down just right when I need it

I make myself wanna shake my hips, then swirl them, and then grind and grind and grind

I am clear about my desire for myself when I am starving for me!

I like it when I tease myself first

I am gentle

I am calm

I am present

I am here

With gratitude,

Amy

A Spelling Poem

I sat, waiting for my annoying appointment.

I flipped the glossy pages and barely browsed the ads.

My eyes caught on a mountain outside.

Saw the sun shining, powerful and strong

On a fresh sprout from the soil

Moisture-hungry and ready.

Inspired by my son’s weekly spelling listwords.

I read that things told in story are 40% more likely to be remembered so he watched me craft the story and we read it together a few times to get the hang of the words and the way they flow.

More fun writing exercises to come from my weekly writing course with Audra Carmine of Love Letters Only.

I started crying immediately. He started laughing too. He stared at me as I doubled over in the kitchen near the dryer, “You’re LOSING it!” he laughed. I couldn’t stop. He meant the laundry; he had moved it to the laundry. The thought of him gently moving my sports bra to the garbage for no reason had me bursting into laughter then and in fits for the rest of the day.

“Move any more of my stuff to the garbage last night?” I asked upon making my way to the kitchen this morning.

The week started in chaos and continued that way, but our demeanors changed, and we started to see the levity in it all. The harshness wasn’t working, and it’s as though the Universe stepped in with a bucket full of silliness to remind us to play.

Tonight, as we headed toward our park walk, I said, “It’s kind of chilly, I'd better get some warm panties.” Wow, we both laughed as I imagined panties made of wool. Warm pants. I needed warm pants…

Two days ago was Talk Like Shakespeare day, and I’m finally getting around to writing a sonnet. This one’s about tonight.

April Sonnet

Ten syllables per line is not that hard

We dressed in silly clothes and walked the dog

Broken arm and wrist, imperfect and marred

We turned toward the sun, out from under fog

With one hand, he held his toothbrush aloft

She squeezed with all her might, the paste stayed stuck

I rushed and washed and reached for something soft

Wet and gooey, my fast arm met paste, yuck!

What the?! They exclaimed and laughed at the sight

Oh my god, I laughed as I showed it off

Tiny moments where everything feels right

Bellies full of laughs, one more swig, a quaff

And sometimes I can’t hear the words you say

Those eyes, soft skin, freckles are in the way

Loves,

Amy

His face was large and wrinkly, well-tanned, and his eyes had that light and joy I see in older folks sometimes. The other man, also waiting in line to order his food, added commentary about the erratic weather back home in Texas, and I stayed silent, as I do.

The day had been ninety-eight degrees and dry, and now, a cool eighty as the sun set, we all felt the energy lifting back up inside of us. The old man beckoned to his very drunk-looking friend at the bar, “Need a ride?” and he did indeed. I ordered my food and a beer and went out to the patio to watch Venus light up the sky as the sun left.

Day one of my desert vacation, and I landed deep in the Saguaro-covered lands of the Superstitions Wilderness. The next morning, I rose early from my cozy bed and ate oatmeal and drank coffee. We drove thirty minutes down a cacti-lined highway to an already warm parking lot. I applied sunscreen as if it were my first time. ‘Where all do I need this?” I asked him jokingly. “I’ve put it on my chest like four times and can’t remember where else this stuff goes!”

My legs hurt, and I didn’t know why. My footing felt shaky, and my legs felt weak. I felt my body heavy and tired. I saw the dry path before us, the hill to be climbed, and felt an overwhelming sense that I didn’t have what it would take. I started to complain about this and that and explained why I was having a hard time, “You know, I just finished my period, and so my energy is low. I just lost a bunch of blood, so I’m already dehydrated.” He listened, and we kept going, leapfrogging a group of three men in their late fifties. “I’ve got to be able to hike faster than them,” I kept thinking. We soldiered on through the sun-baked dusty trail, stopping for long swigs of electrolyte water and to awe at the saguaros waving to us from all directions. “I just want you to see Weaver’s needle,” he kept saying.

I’m no quitter, and I pushed on. I wondered why I was in such a pissy mood about the hike and why I felt so little faith in my own ability to complete it. I wondered why I stepped so cautiously and slowly and what had happened to the me who loved hiking, loved the grit and challenge of it, and knew she was a badass.

We ascended and made it to the needle. I took one look at the needle and then searched for a flat, shady place to put my legs up. Even the weight of my boots felt heavy, and I struggled to sit down and position myself into a supine position on the cool rocks. “Why am I so delicate with myself? Why do I move so carefully now?” My thoughts swarmed around my sticky body like flies. I shooed them away, got up, took my shirt off, and sunbathed topless on a rock. Fill me up, sunshine! Let’s go!

This was hike one of six over the course of the next seven days. Each hike pushed me further. Steep ascents, sketchy ledges, and a growing assertion of my capacity as a human and as a hiker met me along the way. By day six, I ran down the trail, quickly navigating routes and rocks, and tore up the rocky ascents with a level of determination that reminded me of hiking in the hot Idaho sun as a teenager. My partner pointed out an Indian Paintbrush, my favorite Idaho wildflower, and I suddenly felt reconnected with the old me. I was raised in the desert; how could I forget how to do this?

My aching legs yearned for touch, for icy cold water, for yin yoga and rest. I felt my muscles wanting to burst forth, felt my body transforming like a caterpillar ready to rupture from the cocoon. “I’m in here!” she shouted as I felt her ready to emerge.

Had therapy during the trip. Told her about my new awareness of how slowly and carefully I’ve been moving through life and the way the steep climbs amplified my tendencies. Told her I want to move with more confidence, more agility, and more grit. We talked about how I got here, to this place of feeling trapped within my own tight bounds, and she said to me, “You have been mischaracterized, and it enrages me and breaks my heart to be honest.”

I told her about how I read that therapy is very beneficial, but that travel has been shown to induce more rapid positive mental change. The thing I read said, “Data shows that insights gained during travel integrate faster. Instead of weekly reflection, the body learns through movement and emotion.” It goes on to say, “Therapy explains who you are. Travel shows who you could be. And for many people, that glimpse is enough to change everything.”

And I rose from the meditative state of my therapy, and wrote to myself: “I’m not an irritating wasp! I’m a fucking butterfly!”

And as such, I flew all around Sedona. From vortex to vortex, to new-age hippie crystal shops, and to small chats with locals and visitors. A native woman took one look at my partner’s shirt as we assessed her dream catchers and pottery and said, “You like drugs?” “Yes.” We replied without explanation. She liked drugs too, and we talked about the legalization of psilocybin and the legality of marijuana in Arizona. A small, intricately painted ceramic pot caught my eye. “That symbol represents the mixing of the feminine and masculine rains,” she told me. “The masculine rain comes with thunder and lightning. The female rain is just rain.”

“Makes sense,” I thought.

Either way, there was no rain on this trip, and I eagerly await the day I get to return to the sacred desert and smell the scent from the first rain, feminine or masculine, as it touches the parched desert floor.

And I returned home, dried out and filled up.

And I remind myself to know this:

You are who you decide to be

Not who you were once.

Peace and love, and go hang out in the desert, godamnit!

Love ya!

Amy

The Hindu goddess of death and destruction, Kali, knows one way to clean up: with a blowtorch.

And she’s here now, shining a firelight on my life, asking me to destroy a few things and pestering me from within. I speak and preach self-love and acceptance, and then maroon myself back home in a sea of self-loathing. Today I set an alarm on my phone for four hours and said enough is enough with this device. I started to write, pen on paper, about my experience:

1. Start

   1. Headache, rush, anxiety, self-doubt, fear, worry, antsiness

   2. Moving quickly, but not forward

   3. Sensitive to insult, dislike, criticism

   4. Worried about not reaching for my dreams, let alone achieving them

2. Played guitar

   1. Wrote a song about how people who doubt me should leave

3. Showered

   1. Moved slower, bit by bit

   2. Moved slower through the cold water and breathed slowly - let it feel good instead of too intense. Let it cool my heat and slow me down; mellow me out.

4. Sat down to sew

   1. Put on a new red thong first

   2. Why do I push him away?

   3. Want more love and admiration from myself

5. Mind and breath slow and steady like my sewing

6. “Tell me what it is exactly that you don’t like about me?” I ask myself:

   1. Well, you have a headache - that’s annoying

   2. You have fat arms and belly

   3. You don’t see the doctor when you feel unwell

   4. It’s embarrassing how much and how often you try and put yourself out there

   5. It’s embarrassing how much you share and how often

   6. It’s embarrassing that you’re not better at guitar

   7. It’s embarrassing how you talk to people and say your opinions

   8. It’s embarrassing how you think you can guide people, like you have something to offer.

7. Done sewing

   1. Make a note to write a Substack called “Teaching Kali to Sew”

   2. Holes in skirt are sewn

   3. Hole in favorite jacket pocket is sewn so keys and objects will no longer fall out

   4. Hole in favorite black shirt is repaired - no longer need to buy a new one

8. Taught another yoga class

   1. Listened to the radio on the way to work

   2. Tried not to catastrophise an emergency happening with the kids while I am phone-free

   3. Felt good not to have phone out during class

   4. Filled silence with connection

   5. Didn’t try to teach them a goddamned thing, just chilled and held their babies and showed them some yoga moves

9. Came home

   1. 3 minutes left on the phone timer

   2. Read the mail- was all ads - even the important looking ones

   3. Tidied the mess a little

10. End

    1. 4-hour phone-free time achieved

    2. Picked up my phone, felt annoyed and sad about some messages, checked WhatsApp, instagram and my email

    3. Put phone down again, still disgruntled

With a pink marker on white paper: made a list of what WOULD make me happier and what grumpy me needs: List was long and clear and intimidating.

Then I picked up my computer and sent three things I needed to send, needed to ask for and to resolve that I have been wanting to and not asking for for a long time.

Practiced discernment and decisive decision-making: Fixing the “embarrassing” holes in my skirt instead of getting rid of it or buying a new one, because the thing is… some things cannot be replaced. Some things are so special and irreplaceable that they have to be mended, no matter how much you don’t want to mend them or how hard it is to sit your thonged ass down and sew them back together.

And so, teaching Kali to sew, for when destruction isn’t an option.

Me in my fully mended outfit: :) Because it is embarrassing to open up and to create, and I’m gonna do it anyway…

Sarasvati, Hindu goddess of words, speech, wisdom, music, and creation helps me soar above Kali’s flames, reminding me of what exactly it is that I love about me:

1. I’m a dork

2. I’m smart

3. I’m cute

4. I’m hard-working

5. I’m goofy

6. I’m funny

7. I’m athletic

8. I’m talented

9. I’m driven

10. I’m sincere

11. I’m a good friend

12. I’m an even better lover

13. I’m a great mom, and sister, niece, and aunt

14. I’m a great writer

15. I’m fantastic at guitar and at writing songs

16. I’m really fit

17. I’m a phenomenal yoga teacher

18. I know how to care for myself

    1. My headache is gone

    2. And writing helps me feel better

19. I asked for help today and will continue to collaborate one soul at a time

Namaste loves and thank YOU for reading and for supporting me.

Amy

It helps me connect and I learn a lot about people.

Yesterday was therapy.

My therapist and I chatted briefly before I closed my eyes, and we dove in. We’ve been working together for three years now and we know the drill. So we descend, headfirst, respirators on, into my subconscious.

She asks me what’s most important to address, and I say, “I just can’t stop thinking about this blue dress my sister Tara gave me in a dream.”

“I’ve been having these nightmares lately, even though I feel really happy during the day,” I tell her. She invites me to go there now, into the darkness, and so I do. She asks where the darkness resides, “In my field of vision,” I say this time. Sometimes it’s in my abdomen or back.

She asks if we can stay there. I hear a voice say, “What if we could bring this same good energy into the darkness to create?” and then giant claws reach out from behind me and start to shred the darkness, revealing streams of white light from behind. “Uh, something inside of me wants to return to the light.”

I felt another dream of my deceased sister come back up, a dream where she was alive again, and then I felt pain and disgust, and again, the claws came out, quickly tearing the dream apart.

I’m spending a lot of time in the dream space in old homes, “It feels like I’m searching my ancestry for something,” I tell her.

I want to explore, but this animal is also hissing and clawing with me. “It’s like a wounded animal. The animal is willing to guide, but it’s also scared in a way, or protective, protective more.”

“Yeah, does it know who you are?” She asks.

“Oh, that’s a good question. Comforting to it, it feels like it’s softening. I was seeing the image from the perspective of my eyes, and when you said that, I put myself as a little five-year-old girl in the dream, and then the animal was like, oh I see who you are and then I could see the animal, it’s a red fox. The instant you said that, I showed myself, and it showed itself.”

“How is it responding to you now that it knows you’re a five-year-old girl?” she asks

“It’s happy and playful and wants to help me explore my grandpa’s old basement.” My memory is that great grandma died in there, and it’s always been a spooky place. My therapist, my red fox friend, and I search the room.

Why are we here? We check the suitcase under the bed, we see great grandma in there, dead; it doesn’t bother us anymore. We are okay with her body. Suddenly, adrenaline fills my body, my eyes burst open, “I know what the scary thing is in here,” I tell her. My heart races, my eyes dark around my living room. She soothes me, checks on me, “It’s really scary, I say, like “AH!” someone jumping out and scaring you.” It’s the memory of my mom telling me once that her grandma’s ghost came in and touched her hand in the night. Mom said she was immediately startled, but then, upon realizing it was Grandma, felt bad and wanted her to come back and hold her hand. I don’t think Grandma was dead, though, maybe just old, maybe dead.

Either way, I spent so many nights sweaty and too hot, refusing to put my hand out in case a ghost was around my room. I used to dare myself to leave my hand out, counting to ten and then pulling it back into the covers for safety. Then there were times, after my mom died, when I left it out for a long time, hoping she’d take it.

“I’m just wondering, what am I searching for in these dreams, and also, what is it like when a person’s consciousness is so in your physical space? What does that feel like for a person who’s there if someone else’s consciousness is very much there? I’m just wondering what that would feel like.”

She asks what my initial reaction to that question is.

“It would feel like a ghost,” I say. We talk about ghosts for a long time.

And eventually, my red fox by my side, we’re tired of the basement room. We ascend to the farmhouse fields. I climb an apple tree in my shorts and tank top. He’s faster and scurries to the top; we’re smiling. My sun-kissed legs run through the tall grain fields, and I remember Grandpa’s strawberry patch and drinking mom’s milk beneath the summer shade.

And I invite five-year-old me into my home now, she takes a seat immediately on the red chair, her strong, slender legs dangling. Worn shoes and scuffed-up knees. Blond hair and a glowing smile, perfect pearly teeth. She wants to hear me play guitar.

She can’t believe how many of her dreams came true!

We have a dog, we play guitar, we have kids, we are an adult! We can drive! We can buy and eat donuts whenever we want! We’ve traveled the world, we’ve graduated from college (three times!), and we can still climb trees and do cartwheels. We’ve gone skiing!

And we haven’t driven a motorcycle yet. We haven’t sung and played guitar on stage yet. And we still miss Mom, like a lot. We want to go back to Disneyland and on a roadtrip of waterparks this summer. We want to climb more trees and run on more trails. We want to play with the kids like kids, draw like kids. She wants me to stop worrying so much about what everyone thinks and to live for me. To write for me, to sing for me, and to draw for me. To dance for me and laugh with friends for me.

She’s a ghost and she’s me.

She’s here and she’s gone.

And a new book arrived for us in the mail yesterday: Women Who Run With the Wolves

I picked it up after therapy and read the introduction, fifteen lines in, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD says, “My life work as a Jungian psychoanalyst, poet, and cantadora, keeper of the old stories, have taught me that women’s flagging vitality can be restored by extensive “psychic-archeological” digs into the ruins of the female underworld.

And so I know now what I was digging for, therapist and fox friend and I.

Much love,

Amy and…

- Amy

I think this is the slow life I was craving.

The touch of sun on my face changes everything.

In that darkness, I found pain, rage, nausea, blood, phlegm, metal on metal, resentment, betrayal, and the soft, frequent touch of those who hold me.

His hand left mine as we squeezed one another’s thumbs one last time, a message of infinite camaraderie and care, as he left the room. Moments later, the soft caress on my back and then the gentle nuzzle in of my partner. The morning spooning of small warm children beneath the covers, and nighttime wiggly bodies enveloped in my body’s rapture. The way I ruffle her hair on the top of her head like a dog, when she looks and acts happy as a dog. The way he pauses me, over and over again, for shoulder rubs, hugs, a caress, or just to gaze at me. Her heart on mine, tapping, and then hers and then hers and the next and the next…

And my own skin on skin too. Gentle hands that caress sore neck and shoulder, that soothe and soften tough feet.

And the damn dog too, who muddies the house up, who I always seem to forgive during those lazy sunny morning cuddles in bed where she shows me her soft belly, paws high in the air.

And the touch too of sound in my ears, looping down and into my vagus nerve, soothing my body. The surprising and silly sounds of my kids playing, the way his words feel whispered in my ear, and my own voice echoing through the amp as I sing.

And my tongue too, bumpy strawberry skin bursting into sweetness, the gentle crunch between my teeth, and a longing for more. The chills of pleasure that float down my spine as the chocolate ice cream melts down my tongue.

And I like it here today. Life feels palatable and potable. The last few weeks had me wretching and dry heaving, but here I am to watch a small caterpillar climbing an invisible string to the sky.

And the heaviness of the drama is getting to me. Where do I go? How do I move with this awful feeling inside of me? It involves domestic violence, and a woman, still, wanting to stay. I share my perspective. I share the perspective of my friends who have been there. The story is so the same and so hard.

I say, “There are many people who can provide you with what he provides who will also treat you with respect and will never hurt you.” She knows and yet feels she’s invested so much, that change is possible, and that there’s something special there.

And I would kidnap her if I could. Take her away to my den and show her how things can feel wrapped up in a nest of people who love and support her.

Stuck.

The earthy rooting of our vital security, often fulfilled through partnership and financial safety, combined with the fluid flow of pleasure of the sexual relationship, can make romantic partnership very muddy. Leaving feels hard, if not impossible, as we slip and slide at any attempt to leave. Unable to get traction, we slide back in. Helpless or hopeful, we sink back in.

We need some sunlight. Something has to harden the mud. Give us reprieve and allow us to step firmly on solid ground. It’s time to dig into our solar plexus chakra: Our powerhouse of personal power, self-confidence, and willpower. Symbolized by yellow, the sun, and fire. When we balance here, we feel motivated and purposeful.

Manipura, the Sanskrit name for the solar plexus chakra, means city of gems. Center of clarity, joy, optimism, and pure energy. Symbolizes power, confidence, self-discipline, decision-making, and transformation.

So what stops this vortex of solar energy and power within us?

• डं (dda) - Spiritual Ignorance

• ढं (ddha) - Fear

• णं (nna) - Jealousy, Envy

• तं (ta) - Treachery, Betrayal

• थं (tha) - Shame

• दं (da) - Thirst

• धं (dha) - Disgust, Hatred

• नं (na) - Delusion

• पं (pa) - Foolishness

• फ़ं (pha) - Sadness

Sounds like a lot to overcome, and yet we have no choice if we want out. Enter antidepressants, enter meds, enter substances, enter foods, enter all the things we take on to cover up these horrible feelings, mask them and dampen them down, meanwhile, literally filling our digestive centers with things that are… very fucking hard to digest.

But to feel those? Yuck! To taste them, digest them, and fully process them sounds daunting, gross, painful… When have I been delusional? When have I been shameful? When have I been foolish? When have I sat down and journaled on these and taken ownership of my own unprocessed impediments to my own power?

When have I betrayed myself?

Even now, I feel myself wanting to pull away and not share this. Words like “unhinged” and “too vulnerable” come to mind. We humans are raised and trained to be grossly overly critical of ourselves and of one another, and it is in our primal nature to love and have compassion.

Let’s dig into the compassion for one another, let the criticism float away like the fickle clouds that they are, and feel what’s vibrating between us beneath the surface: Deeply routed love, compassion, and desire for one another to thrive and blossom, to feel the sun on our petals and know that we have what it takes to get out of the fucking mud!

How do we tap into what gives us power when we feel powerless?

For me, I find a profound alchemy when engaged in a circle of women. This is why I have created Yoga for the Erotic Self and why I encourage any and all women (for now - men, you’re next and I love you), to join a women’s circle, and especially mine: yoga for the erotic self

Warmly,

Amy

I think once long ago, I was a New Year’s Eve fan. I was 8-10 years old and my mom was playing music in a hotel convention center. We got to stay in the hotel and bounce from bed to bed while blowing those elongating blowy things. There was an indoor pool too, and a hot tub. We were unsupervised as far as I can remember. Mom dressed up and sang her heart out on stage, and we danced wildly in the crowd, high on soda caffeine. I liked New Year’s then.

But as the years went on, something about the thrill seeped away until there was little more than a list of “to do-betters” to be made and a dwindling desire to make such a list. Haven’t I been doing enough? Haven’t I been trying enough? Inhale. Exhale.

Something I read recently said, “Expecting radical change in January often directly contradicts human biology.”

Winter is meant, biologically, for rest and gestation. Spring is when energy returns. As I studied yoga, I learned that the new year for many cultures begins in March and Spring when new life comes forth. It feels right, it makes sense, and so why, here in the West, do we celebrate the New Year at the tail end of December, and the beginning of winter? Energy is low, vibe is low, steam is low, and yet, weeeee here we go again.

January, it turns out, was named after the Roman God Janus, the God of beginnings, doors, thresholds, and transitions. Here he is:

He is depicted looking simultaneously forward and backward because he symbolizes reflecting equally on both. In 45 BCE, Julius Caesar set January 1st as New Year’s Day. As Americans, we inherited this from British Law and European tradition. From this, cultural meanings around New Year’s Day evolved:

• A clean slate moment in a culture that values reinvention.

• A collective liminal space - the threshold transition between what was and what is next.

• Closure, intention, renewal

• Millions of people agree to pause, reflect, and begin again at the same moment.

• Decluttering- Asking: What do I want to move toward?

January is a time of discernment:

Permission to rest, not self-optimize.

Nervous systems reset through clarity and containment, not pressure.

Clarity and containment.

Refining involves putting down, precision, and setting sacred limits.

Mmm, I want some sacred limits.

I read much of this on ChatGPT and took it with me to yoga class on New Year’s Eve.

I asked who liked New Year’s Eve, and people grumbled. One student said she was more of a 365-day girl and preferred consistency over big change.

I said what I could get behind today was the visualization practice of imagining myself standing right in front of a doorway. I noticed what was on the otherside of that doorway, what was on me, and the bag I carried on my shoulders. I thought about the idea of carrying this massively overstuffed backpacking bag with me into the new year. I thought, well, what if I want to collect something this year? Where will it fit? And class went on, and I asked them to visualize what was on the other side of their door, to just close their eyes, open their third eye, and visualize something beautiful for themselves on the other side.

Then I asked them to consider what they were bringing with them into the new year. I asked if there was anything they could set down now to lighten their load. I asked if they could even downsize their bag. I asked that every exhale be a release of a weight of something that no longer served them.

We let more of the Earth hold us.

And at the very end of class, I saw my image. The mountains and rolling hills filled with wild white flowers, high, snow-covered mountains in the distance, and me, hiking boots on, setting down my big pack, replacing it with a running vest. The perfect size to hold water and a snack.

And this too: an appreciation of beautiful things without the need to possess them. To simply hold them, inspect and awe at them, and then to gently return them to where I found them.

Keeping myself light and agile, fit and ready, and on the go.

That’s the spring me, and I love her.

And winter me, is germinating, resting, restoring, and breathing.

I inhale to receive.

I exhale to release.

And class ended, and the woman in the front row looked at me in awe and said, “THAT WAS WONDERFUL!”

And I smiled and chatted with people as they commented on this or that about class, and then found myself so delightfully charmed when a woman left without her entire bag, and another without her hat. “You listened,” I jested as they returned for their things.

And later that day, I too practiced. I drove an hour to an indoor waterpark for my friend Cora’s 9th Birthday. After hooping and hollering down the slides with my family, I took a spontaneous trip to the sea with my guy. It was only an hour further, and we could buy toothbrushes.

We drove and arrived just as the sun was doing this:

And we were doing this:

And the tide pools were doing this:

And later the sunset did this:

I’ve been in a state of rest since. Never have I completed more puzzles or practiced more guitar. I’m inhaling CBD and taking long, hot epsum salt bubble baths. I’m dreaming and seeing where those dreams take me. I’m sinking my roots into the Earth and inhaling her vital energy, allowing it to fill me up, all the way up. I’m noticing what nourishes me:

• books

• writing

• staring at the sky

• jogging

• looking at moss on fences and trees

• growing and eating mushrooms

• long cuddles

• elaborately created meals

• guiding adults, babies, and children to breathe in and to breathe out while moving our bodies in silly and creative ways

• using mouth tape to improve my sleep and laughing as Ezra uses it to tape her stuffed animal’s mouth closed too

• fasting 12-14 hours a day (overnight)

• laughing until I cry

• crying until I laugh

And this one’s for you, Tara, my big sis who was born today and died a few years back: Today I submitted my application for graduate school to be a marriage, couple, and family therapist. And here’s why:

Lewis & Clark Graduate School Admissions Essay

By Amy Peck

The steady pull of a current guides my life: A deep desire to nourish others. As an undergraduate at Lewis & Clark, I studied psychology and puzzled over how we humans work and why we do what we do. I fell in love with the art of understanding our nature. College ended, and my mom died six months later. I sank into the riverbed, and I found myself in deep contemplation: If we don’t get as much time as we think, what shall we do with this time? I knew I wanted to connect with and help others.

As a nurse and then as a nurse practitioner, one by one in the exam room, I saw people in pain and desperately wished that they could hear one another’s stories. Yes, they were alone in their personal anguish, but they were not alone in their experiences. When a decade in medicine didn’t seem to be the answer, I stepped away and took a breath. With space away, I came to know a truth that shaped my life and career: Intimate connection with others is vital to our biology.

In need of my own interconnection and support, I began a yoga teacher training. The instructor, a marriage and family therapist, taught me how to bring a community together and encourage transformation through breath, connection, and movement. Like the current of a river swelling into the sea, I knew how I would become that interpersonal and community healer I longed to be.

The most challenging critical feedback I’ve ever received has come from within. Thoughts of self-doubt, negativity, and cruelty flow into my mind. Some days are easier, and the feedback is kinder. Other days, the voice is harsh and punishing. After years of marriage and personal therapy, yoga and mindfulness, and many a well-underlined book, the thoughts are still there, but like a dreamcatcher, I can now catch the critical feedback, let the good feedback in, and run with it. Dreaming from there. The love outlasts the suffering. My mind, heart, womb, and all their parts are on the same side: my side. I am a warrior and a goddess. I am a healer and a pleasure activist. I am my own most dedicated friend.

Today I lead women’s circles, guide group yoga classes, and teach multi-week courses on emotional, physical, and spiritual health. My cup is full, and I have more to give. I want to lead group intimacy workshops and then have the ability to work with couples and families individually when further support is needed. The beauty of the Lewis & Clark graduate campus, the focus on diversity in all its forms, and the high academic rigor are vital assets to me. As a place I studied, played, and fell in love, it’s a home; A place of vital knowledge, growth, and rebirth. A graduate degree from Lewis & Clark will magnify my skillset and illuminate me for those in need of a lighthouse along their own voyages.

Warmly,

Amy

There was drama with another friend, a friend I traveled down there with, and after many hours of retelling and processing it all with friends and family, I’m ready to move on and focus on the joyous parts of the trip. Ultimately, traveling with friends and their kids can be challenging. So many times I wanted to throw my hands up and throw her out. And time and again, this message, carved on a rock in Joshua tree came back to me:

The key to life is contact.

And so, time and again, I reconnected with her, mended, and gently sewed our friendship back together. The seem may be imperfect and we’ll be gentle moving foward.

Let’s stay in touch and stay connected, especially when it’s hard.

And now, a literal ton of pictures from the sunshine:

And a couple of poems from the trip:

Mohave Desert

Spines abound

long and definite

Beautiful and mesmerizing

possess me only 

with your eyes

- Amy

Orion 

If only those three stars knew

Millions of miles apart

How beautiful they look together

From here 

-Amy

K-Pop Demon Hunters

I saw a chicken butt when I woke up

The buffalo was attacking the chicken butt

I flew out with a flash

To K-Pop land

- Ezra

My Turtle Friend

He’s not dead

He lives in a shed

But when he’s dead,

I guess he will smell

- Elliot

Looking Up 

Big blue sky

Big white clouds

Yellow hot sun

- Paul

And finally, about love:

Joshua Tree 

The moon

Like a fruit

On a tree

I never planted

- Amy 

Until next time, sacred land…

Love,

Amy

“I like stuffing, and I like pulling out,” he says over my shoulder as I type, as if I’m not a wee little stenographer.

He’s talking about the draw string of his pants and the process of dealing with a string that is partially pulled into the hole, and the process of pulling it back out. He asked if it annoys me when it happens. I say no, I like the little puzzle and challenge, but also yes, it’s super annoying.

He’s lifting weights in the backyard now, as I let the words, finally, pour out of the tips of me.

The stockings are hung, the shopping is done, food is ready to be prepped for back-to-back family dinners, packages mailed, and I just keep thinking, “Why do I do all this?” I overfill my house with presents, my bank account running low, my energy spent too, and yet, this deep, resounding satisfaction settles in as I acknowledge how much work I’ve put into this holiday and how wonderful it’s going to be. How wonderful it has already been.

The joy of bringing my loved ones into my home, of sharing what I’ve collected and made with those I love.

Yesterday we decorated gingerbread houses with one of my best friends and her ex and their kids, my boyfriend was here, and my ex too. I felt this expansive love abound and sat in wonder at the way having children has made all of our hearts grow.

My guitar teacher came by for my lesson on Saturday evening. He was all humbug and grump. I told him about the way that having kids really brought my own childhood excitement around Christmas back, and how, suddenly, I felt that magic again. He said, “Yeah, it’s just annoying cuz I don’t get paid for two weeks and so I could rest, but like my parents miss me… and there are so many people to see and I just want to relax.”

And I know he’s not alone. It’s the solstice, or was yesterday, and the energy is low, the vibration slow and steady. People don’t understand why they can’t rest when every cell in their body is telling them to. My friend Katie and I got sick at the same time. Bad cold. We both canceled classes, stayed home, rested, and then, as Katie said, “I could feel the capitalism in my veins start to rise back up!” and boom, we were back at it.

The capitalism is our own survival, at least for me. I’m reading Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, and in the passage I read this morning, they discussed a group of Italians in Pennsylvania in the 1960s who had astonishingly low rates of heart disease. The sociologist began to study them to know what it was that was keeping them so damned healthy. As they studied them and carefully excluded factors such as exercise, diet, regional variables like pollution etc, they concluded that the major factor keeping folks in this town healthier longer was the nature of the community itself. In this Italian community, everyone shared, housing was multigenerational, and there was community disdain for any display of wealth. Such ostentatiousness, they believed, would bring them bad luck. This stemmed from the ancient belief among Italian villagers relating to the maloccio (the evil eye).

The authors go on to say that, “In foragers, where property is shared, poverty tends to be a nonissue.” And they go on to quote Marshall Sahlins: “Poverty… is the invention of civilization.” Explaining that many of the most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. And Socrates, he points out, said 2,400 years ago: “He is richest who is content with least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.”

And so maybe I’ll give my kids a single pinecone and a golden paint. Maybe I’ll invite them to ponder and outline every edge of the cone and to revel in nature’s ingenious design.

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha go on to explain the ways in which colonists throughout time visited “poor” and “savage” people and came home detailing the depravity of their lifestyles. They retell an attempt by British sailors to help a group of people from Tierra del Fuego to join the civilized world. The same ship on which Darwin was sailing took three of these Feugians to Britain, and taught them their ways, and then returned them home to serve as missionaries to show the rest of their people how to be civilized. A year later, the sailors checked in on their progress and noticed the native people had abandoned everything they had attempted to create for them, and refused to return to England, stating that here they were “happy and contented” with “plenty fruits, plenty fish, and plenty birdies.”

And in a home with plenty, why then, do I shop and gather, collect and send?

This is the least amount of money I’ve had in a while and it changes the way I see Christmas. I see the hundreds of lights on the big houses and I think, “Wow, they must feel really good about their electrical bill and their ability to pay it.” And I too can pay my bills with the help of others. I too can eat and feed my kids, with the help of my government.

And I think still, that maybe we are all still foragers, still nomadic and egalitarian at heart, trapped within these boxes and lines, just waiting for someone to burn down all the fences, distribute the fruits and fish evenly, so we can all lay back in the grass, feel the sun on our faces, the cold chill on our skin, and watch in aw as a gull glides freely in the blue sky above.

Plenty of fruit. Plenty of fish. Plenty of birdies.

Merry Christmas and love a plenty.

Amy

Subtleties lost on a life unforgiving. The nature of existence: to create and destroy. And what about this mess, then? What for if not for order? Impermanent order, and then, collapse.

I said, “Someday a robot will scan your body and tell you which fifteen yoga poses to do to fix your ailments, whatever they may be, and it’ll work great, and you’ll walk away feeling thrilled and so much better!” And they laughed, and one of us said, “And it makes you wonder what humans have to offer to the robots...” I retold the story to a friend, and she answered so quickly it still blows my mind, “We’ll be the broken ones.” “Robots do need something to repair and love to solve puzzles,” I agreed. And then we looked at the full moon for a bit, standing in the dead center of the night street as we do.

Maybe the moon doesn’t have a consciousness, but I swear sometimes that I feel it looking, feel the weight of its gaze on me so heavily, that I’m forced to turn and return the contact. As if she had something to add to the conversation, some light on a dark night and a dark conversation.

What do we humans have to add?

My friend says her goal for 2026 will be to stay broken. I laugh and tell her that as a yoga instructor, she would say, “Breathe in, pull yourself together, now exhale, fall apart completely! Ahhh, very good!”

I think of my most recent LEGO masterpiece and say, “It’s just like when you add the final piece, and you try to push it in a little too hard and then crash the whole thing, smashes into smithereens. And now I pause, what the fuck is a smithereen?

The phrase “blown to smithereens” originates from the Irish word “smidirín,” a diminutive of “smiodar,” meaning “fragment” or “small piece”. The word entered the English language in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, often appearing in early texts with a variant spelling, “smiddereens”. The expression implies being blown apart or smashed into tiny, countless pieces.

Tiny countless pieces, thanks, AI!

Creation and destruction.

And so…

If you find my pieces

If you find my pieces

bring them home.

If you find my pieces

be gentle and kind

hold them lightly

leave none behind.

If you find my pieces

let them be

let them sink into the soft soil

and nourish the roots

of a sycamore tree.

If you find my pieces

make a wish and send them flying

high to the sky just for me

Let the speck of me be covered with ice

as it reaches the clouds above

and let water vapor cover me still

until frozen, I grow

sprouting six wings anew

and let me fall gently down

and land on your tongue

like I do.

If you find my pieces

savor me whole.

Peace and love, fellow humanoids and AI.

Warmly,

Amy

In this scene in my life, a woman takes out her rage on the piano my mother-in-law bought me from a thrift store. The thrift store proceeds go to the homeless, and the piano was a surprise gift after I mentioned wanting the kids to take piano lessons this fall and winter.

Linda, the brute, said it may not be possible to tune it. The keys are too sluggish, do I see that? The problem, she said, is they put too much weight on the piano with the design, and it causes it to… something. I couldn’t keep listening. She was so upset, pissed off, I dare say, at the piano. It’s the best I could do, I think, and feel shame fill me. She said it should have been looked at in the store to be sure it was worth tuning, and now she violently slams the keys as my boyfriend and I stare at one another across the dining table, silently eating our mush and raising our eyebrows every time there is a louder-than-usual slam of the keys. I point to her and mimic slicing my own throat, and he closes both eyes slowly and nods his head.

She wants us to be silent as she pounds, and so we adorn headphones and play music to drown out her aggression.

And if she only knew how much the piano meant to me. The gift from my mother-in-law, the way it reminds me of my own deceased mother, who used to play for me night and day. If only she knew what a piano key did to my spirit and the way I couldn’t listen to a song with piano in it for ten years after she died without sobbing. If only she knew the way the violence of her slamming of the keys made me feel, what it did to my tender ears used to mommy’s slender, gentle fingers.

And I feel the sadness well up, snuggled tightly under my diaphragm where I keep it down until she’s gone and it’s safe to cry.

A dear friend once posted something on the internet about how you never know how someone is doing, if someone is one slight away from total despair, and he urged kindness, sweetness toward others, always, just in case.

Her phone rings, and it’s the old piano ringtone, of course, we both laugh. I used that ringtone for my mom when she used to call, and I haven’t heard it in a long time.

She’s grumpy with the caller, too, dismissive, and annoyed at his/her intrusion.

And I listen now, headphones on, to a delicate piano song. It sounds like a fine grand piano, worthy of tuning. And now I’m sad for the piano. Sad for her rudeness toward it. For implying it may be time to give up on it, that’s it’s not good enough for a tune up, instead in need of deep repair. She said it would be an extra $270 to make the keys less sluggish. I said I’d pay whatever to make it playable. She seemed to ease up. She said it would need many tunings. I said that would be okay.

I thought of the way my husband and boyfriend moved it in with our favorite psychedelic moving company: movin’ and groovin’, and the work and expense of it all. Of the way we had already labeled each of the keys with the names and staff locations, the way the ones that were slightly sideways were done by my littlest, and of the way the fingerprints of both of my kids were already embedded in the keys.

And she’s moved to the low keys now, the eerie notes ring out of tune, and I agree that it needs a lot of work.

And my boyfriend stares up at me from his computer, a mischievous look in his eye, and I see he’s texted me from across the table:

I text him back:

And we laugh out loud and continue working.

Until he texts me again:

He knows I love those things. He knows my mood needs a boost. He knows this is torture.

And I want the piano lady to leave now. To take her grumpy elitist energy with her and to leave my piano perfectly tuned so I can play Chopsticks for the ten thousandth time and remember the way Mom taught me, the way she made anything look easy on the piano, and the way, even as early as November, the pain of missing her sinks heavily into my heart. This sort of sadness is usually reserved for late December and early January, but something about this beating on the piano is getting to me.

I’ve been thinking about tune-ups all week. I got my car looked at and repaired, and I went to the dentist, where they deep-cleaned and dealt with some nerve pain. I spoke today in class about specificity, about overcoming ambiguity, getting clarity, and knowing exactly what it is you want, exactly what it is that’s making you jealous, exactly what it is you want to feel, need, and desire. I talked about coming out of the mud, of cleaning the gunk off of our keys so that they slide into locks and open doors and treasure chests more easily. I spoke of finally pulling the rug back and taking a look at all the things we’ve swept beneath it, and finally addressing the things we trip over repeatedly.

I want a tuned piano for myself and my kids to sing and play with. I want to teach them Christmas songs and have us all gather around at Christmas and sing. I want to feel my fingers on the cool keys and play the songs Mom taught me over and over again and feel her with me, just a bit.

She pauses and asks if I want the top notes of the piano tuned. She says she’ll have to retune the middle keys if she does it. I say I’d like the entire piano tuned. I ask if she needs water.

The slamming and wacking continues. I think of running a bath to smooth my nervous system after she’s gone. She finds me in the bathroom, water running, and tells me it’s too loud. Got it. I say and stop the water.

She finishes and tells me to get rid of the stickers on the keys. I tell her I’m not looking for advice. I pay her and she leaves quietly.

“Good riddance, Linda!” I say exasperatedly as I lock the door behind her. “What a stuffy old bat!” Paul, my boyfriend, exhales finally.

And to all the Lindas of the world, may you be well and may you be kind and gentle with yourself, others, and with other people’s pianos.

And may our tune-ups be gentle too, and help us to play more smoothly and in tune.

Mom at the piano.

Much love and take care,

Amy

Thinking about wilting flowers

Checking the fresh blooms

For signs of dryness and wrinkles

Ever worried about their eventual loss

And too caught up in it

Sometimes

To delight in the plushness of their petals

And the vibrance of their geometry

And I look to the sky, to the lazy summer clouds

And I see lion faces smiling down at me

And starry eyes peaking through

The light in my own eyes

Starting right back

And I’m up more at night these days

In a lawn chair in the backyard now

Because the days are too hot to be out

And the cool, fresh air awakens my warmed, slow-roasted body

And apples thud to the grass behind me

And I know he’ll bring me fresh flowers when these ones wilt

When the water thickens and greens

There was a two-bouquet day the other day

When I was especially down

And couldn’t stop staring at the wilting

And the new ones bloom and shine and shrivel

Just like us

And the old ones go out

And the new ones arrive

And the cycle goes on

And I think of the longer lives of the flowers we leave in the soil

Of the white and pink striped flowers I saw today

I said, “Ooh, look at these!”

And the two five-year-olds both stopped and sniffed and oohed and ahhed, and I thought, “That’s what I like about kids, they’re always impressed and they always have time.”

And a great man once said to me, “I once made a deal with myself that no matter what, I would ask myself, ‘Do I have time to stop and smell the flowers,’ and I would always say ‘Yes.”

And ever since, I’ve done the same; taken flowers as a cue to slow down and be mindful, to take a deep breath in and savor the sensation.

And I’m chilled now, so I’ll turn in.

I’ll think of the beauty of the day

my sweet neighbors who brought an air conditioner to my porch,

My five-year-old’s kindergarten playground playdate

And the way I saw a bubble with three bubbles inside of it!

I’ll remember the taste of the best olive oil ice cream I’ve ever had,

The feel of the squishy, sleepy babies I held in yoga class today and our discussion around self-doubt and overcoming it,

Of the time alone at home with the dog,

Of the fancy date night, and hard, but good talks with my boyfriend around knowing when one cycle is done and when it’s time to begin the next.

We decided it’s like the time he was too hot and said grumpily that he did NOT want to be sprayed by the hose, and I knew, instantly, he needed to be sprayed more than ever, and again, soaking wet, the light returned to his eyes,

The smile spread across his face, and he said,

“Oh, I really needed that!”

May you be sprayed with a hose on a hot day.

May you smell the flowers

And gaze back up at the stars.

And not dwell on the loss to come

But feast your senses on what is.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

and begin again.

Thank you for reading.
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Love ya,

Amy