I’ve had trouble sleeping lately.

I wake up suddenly, violently most mornings around 3am, prodded awake by my body.

At first, I lie still and watch the shadows of the palm trees outside of my windows rake their fingers up and down the wall, the orange glow of the streetlight outlining their bones.

I try not to, but some nights, in an effort to escape the narrow walls of my insomnia, I turn to online chatter. I lie on my side, cradling my phone in the palm of my hand as I read about things that make me cry and laugh and experience hope sitting alongside despair.

I read about recipes meant to increase my protein, the best way to invest my money, and tarot spreads I should try. One swipe of the finger takes me from the atrocities in Gaza to a yoga sequence. I feel disjointed, caught between sleep and wake, between horror and peace.

One night, I read about Voyager 1.

The headline pulled me in: NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is talking nonsense. Its friends on Earth are worried.

I can relate, I thought to myself. I know what it feels like to be alone, spinning words in my head that deflate as soon as I try to speak them. I know what it feels like to go silent for months on end, for my friends to gently check in on me.

I didn’t know I had so much in common with a lonely spacecraft.

In 1977, the United States sent Voyager 1 into the universe with an American flag, a golden record and a mission: go see Jupiter and Saturn. Send back pictures. Tell us what it’s like out there.

What was meant to be a 4-year mission has stretched into 46 years spent winging away from Earth. Voyager 1 has exited the heliosphere and entered into interstellar space. It is in the most foreign of lands, witnessing parts of the universe that humans may never reach.

But it is dying.

One by one, Voyager’s instruments have been shut off. It took its last photos on Valentine’s Day in 1990. One of them, the Pale Blue Dot, showed humanity just how small it really was—nothing more than a mote of dust floating in a vast expanse.

Despite this, on the Voyager went, faithfully sending back strings of binary code to tell Earth all about what it was seeing, feeling, experiencing. As I read this, I imagined the spacecraft, the size of a compact car, writing feverishly in a well-worn journal.

Wish you could see this. You wouldn’t believe it. It’s beyond what we all imagined.

But these days, the Voyager 1 is lost in translation.

It sends back endless strings of alternating 0s and 1s, nonsensical blabber that none of its scientist friends can decipher. A fatal error, most agree. There are attempts to fix it, yes, but the end will be the same: eventually, the Voyager 1—launched with such a grand, otherworldly task—will become nothing more than space junk.

For whatever reason, I cried as I read this, alone at 3am with nothing to accompany me but my thoughts and the sound of the wind moving through the palm fronds.

I couldn’t stop thinking of the sweet, earnest Voyager, sending messages back home that would never be read. I thought of how terribly sad it must to see things so extraordinary and to have no one to tell.

I fell asleep eventually, wondering if the Voyager thought it was fine. I wondered if it knew it was dying. I wondered if it mattered.

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When I found out I was pregnant, my first thought was of course I am.

It was 12:49pm on a Wednesday. I was alone.

I thought about all of the blurry, confusing signals my body had been sending home for the past few weeks. The tears, the pains, the strange tensing sensation I had deep inside me.

It made sense.

The two blue lines gave me an explanation, but I felt so far from understanding what I had embarked on. An entire universe was being created, expanding from nothing. And I could not possibly see what was happening. And people who saw me couldn’t begin to guess all that was happening within.

Everything I read told me about the connection I would feel, the intimate communication between me and the life growing inside of me. I don’t feel it, I thought. My body was receiving the signals, yes, but I didn’t understand them.

Just wait, my friends said. You’ll feel it soon.

But despite being nestled safely within me, I imagined my tiny voyager floating in deep space, cartwheeling among the stars, lightyears away. I wondered how I was meant to establish a connection with this otherworldly being.

I’ve heard people say that everything changed when they found out they were going to become a mother. But I worried what it meant if I couldn't see the change. Couldn't feel it yet.

My child felt far from me still.

In February, Hilly and I left the island and moved to Florida. Near where we live now, there is a wide, vast lake, a bastion of tranquility nestled next to one of the busiest streets in the area.

I walk there often, scouting for the knobby heads of alligators breaching the still surface of the waters and keeping watch as the long-necked herons delicately probe the loamy soil for food.

The division is stark: traffic whooshes by in even lanes in the background, but before me, all is wild and unfettered. Ducks skitter into the reeds. A lazy turtle eats a lily pad slowly, methodically. I am content to stand still and watch, taking Mary Oliver’s advice to heart.

As the sun sets, most days, I hear the plaintive cries of the moorhens—the small, black waterfowl who roost in the reeds. Their calls sound like someone pathetically blowing a party blower, a lackluster “hurrah?” of a noise that feels like a mournful celebration. Like happiness undercut with worry.

One evening, as I stand at the end of the dock, I watch as a small moorhen picks its way across the dried rushes, balancing delicately on a basket-weave raft of dying cattails. A fledgling, I figure, given away by its downy feathers and tentative steps.

It calls in intervals to another island of reeds across the way, as if to say, can you hear me? Do you see me? Another moorhen answers it: Yes. I see you.

It voyages on, searching for water spiders and tiny insects that hide in the hulls of spent cattails. It sends messages back home, one by one. A tiny tether of understanding arcs across the water, anchoring child to mother.

As I stand still, the sky darkens quickly, turning from a fiery burnt orange to soft blue shot through with pale yellow across the horizon. Still, I hear the cries of the now-invisible fledgling moorhen. I am here. I am here.

The mother stops responding. Still, the child cries, but the quality has shifted. I do not hear loneliness. I hear a story. I am seeing the other side of the universe. I know I am not alone. I know that home is still there. I will return.

I place my hand on the tender space where the universe expands within me, where my tiny voyager journeys from places I will never see. I imagine my child, making its way earthside, winging by the distant Voyager 1, waving as it passes. Promise me you’ll tell everyone how beautiful it is out here, the dying spacecraft tells my child.

I will, it responds.

I watch as the distance expands between the two, one leaving and one coming. One dying and one being born.

My eyes blur at the impossibly beautiful thought of it all.

I wrote the below poem about Voyager 1 during one of my sleepless nights.

Thank you for being with me on this beautiful, wild journey.

The last year I’ve lived on St. Croix has taught me that time is a carnival fun house, one spent standing in front of mirrors that stretch and contort our experiences.

There are days on the island that are wider than they are long, where everything happens all at once and the energy is compressed into a few, fleeting moments.

A sunset that explodes in color at the last minute, a particularly shocking dunk in Caribbean waters, an unexpected detour that takes me to an overlook I’ve never seen before.

There are weeks that wave and wobble across my awareness, ones where yesterday seems like it happened years ago and I swear July just finished, even though it’s October now.

The woman I see reflected in these months is unclear, a Picasso of a person, with her head off to one side and her hands twice their size.

And there are those days that are tall and thin, shaped like the island itself, where time seems irrelevant and sunrises bleed easily into sunsets without my noticing. Seasons march by. I stand still.

Even before I lived here, people told me time was funny on the island.

And it is funny. But here, time feels more real.

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One of my favorite books when I was a child was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle.

I first read it in 5th grade, a year marked by brown-bag textbooks and a math teacher who told me to stop asking so many questions. In contrast, A Wrinkle in Time was full of questions, the big sort that you whisper to yourself before falling asleep: what is Time? Who and Where and What are we? What is really possible when you think beyond the linear?

25 years later, I often think of the metaphor Mrs. Whatsit gave when explaining a tesseract1 to the children in the book:

I think of my own timeline. I think of the moments the hands have come together and pushed me into the next phase without enough time to think: my divorce. My move to St. Croix.

My body took months, years to catch up with each quantum leap—like my ant-self was still somewhere behind real-me, plodding along that taut line step by step. Just when I can see her, a black speck on the horizon, the hands move, and the cycle restarts. I wonder if I’ll ever catch up to myself again.

I think a lot these days about the idea of a taut line. A life lived linearly—college, marriage, house, kids, aging, death. A balancing act, to be certain, but safer in many ways.

My own line is a cat’s cradle of a life, woven in between the two disembodied hands. My line crosses over and under. It moves backwards and sideways and upside down.

I went non-linear when I got divorced and moved out of the perfect suburban house and into a city apartment with uneven floors. I tangled the thread when I walked away from my teaching career without something new to walk towards. I doubled back and over again when I changed my entire life for love, without the ring, without the promise, without anything other than belief in what could grow.

Eventually, after a series of non-linear choices, I grow tired of it all. Life looks tangled and messy, a cacophony of strings hopelessly twisted beyond repair.

But then, the hands move again. They pull and pluck and rearrange, and suddenly, I see the pattern, I see Jacob’s endless ladder.

In those moments, I see exactly why the line had to bend that way.

Yesterday was my 365th day on the island. In another 71 days, I will leave it.

The hands have come together again—a new job for Hilly, another leap, another year of catching up.2

I feel tired when I think about it all. I wonder about the What and Why of my time here in St. Croix, a time that feels both short and long. I wonder when I’ll see the shape in between the hands.

If I ever will.

A few nights ago, I stood next to Hilly outside of our home in St. Croix and looked at the stars. It’s dark where we live. No streetlights. No headlights piercing the night. Just us and the inky blackness above.

I leaned my head against his shoulder as he pointed out Casseopeia, the vain queen chained to her throne. She zig zags through the sky, both ominous and beautiful.

Cassiopeia spends half of her year upside down as punishment, circling the poles with her head below her heart. In this moment, she is somewhere in between, tilted to the right a bit, one breath from toppling forward on to her head.

I wonder what she sees right before she falls. I wonder if she wishes she had chosen differently. I wonder what she thinks about as she waits for her world to right itself once more.

Later that night, as I lie in bed, I think of Cassiopeia. I think of myself, not chained to any throne but ready to tumble into the unknown all the same. I see my timeline as a constellation, unlikely groupings of stars making bigger pictures in the sky.

I close my eyes and watch the hands come together. When the time comes, I know I will leap.

Sometimes, the cow that lives next door stands off to the side of the road where it’s shady. More often, however, she is right in the middle of it—placidly chewing her cud, blinking her brown eyes, and staunchly refusing to move.

If I’m on foot, I pick my way around her. I avoid the rope that ties her to a tree, just in case she decides to use it as a trip wire on me. I watch her flick her tail—maybe a sign of annoyance. Maybe just a way to chase away the flies. And I move on.

But the day I met her while in a car was a different story. There she was, right in the middle of my path. There was no way around.

I put my beat up Toyota into park and unbuckled my seatbelt. She swung her head to look at me, her body positioned left to right, a silent sentry refusing my request to proceed.

I got out of the car. The mid-afternoon sun filtered through the trees that lined the steep hillside, dappling the dirt with patches of light and dark. I asked her to move. Politely, because I still believe animals understand us more than we think.

She flared her nostrils slightly, snorting her displeasure. I sighed in return. I would have to move her.

As a child, I read a lot of stories about animals. Horses, mainly, but I guess there remains a part of me that believes in my ability to get animals to trust me, just like every female lead in the paperbacks I devoured in the ‘90s.

I also thought this redirection would be simple: pick up the rope, give it a tug, and she’d amble off with nothing more than the cow equivalent to a shoulder shrug.

As you can probably guess, that’s not exactly what happened.

I did the first part: the picking up of the rope, the tugging. But what I didn’t account for was the fact that she would tug back. Hard. Cows, in case you were unaware, are strong.

She began kicking her feet up, almost like a bucking horse (another thing I thought my books had prepared me for), causing the rope I was holding to jerk right and left. It slid through my hands painfully, but my Taurean stubbornness kicked in, and I refused to let go.

The rope grew taut as she resisted me, nearly clotheslining me to my own car, and for a moment, I had the clarity to think, maybe I should have just turned around. After all, there was another way down the hill.

But eventually, through no effort of my own, the cow catapulted herself over to the side of the road. I dusted myself off and got back into my car.

The way was finally clear. But I didn’t feel like I had won.

I posted the below image on Instagram a few days ago.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

To be honest, this past year has felt anything like silk. It’s been more like a rough, twine rope sliding through my hands as I try desperately to move obstacle after obstacle out of the way.

Some days, the path is clear: I feel like I’m finally starting to fit in on St. Croix. I don’t have to use my GPS to get to where I’m going. I remember to slow down for the speed bump near my house that is the exact same color as the road. Someone remembers my name.

But other days, all I feel is resistance.

Things that felt easy in St. Louis—writing, yoga, making friends—are not easy for me here. Writing has felt rough, painful even. In 2022, I published 92 pieces on my Substack. In 2023, I’ve written just 8.

I have all but stopped reading tarot. The last few readings I wrote up took me weeks to complete, simply because I could not see around whatever was blocking my path forward.

And yoga—something I’ve leaned on for years to balance and hold me—is shifting sand beneath my feet. I wonder constantly if I should offer these parts of myself anymore. I wonder if I ever was meant to do so.

I stand on the dirt path of my life, trying desperately to peer over these faceless, silent blocks that stand in my way. I realize that, even if I could see past them, it wouldn’t matter.

The resistance isn’t external at all. It is coming from within me.

I’m learning how to play chess.

Hilly and I sit across from each other, a green-and-white checkered board spread between us. I line up my pawns, one after another. They stand at attention, ready for my clumsy direction. Behind us, the waning sun winks between the leaves of a baobab tree.

I am not good at chess.

I play too quickly. I launch my knights almost immediately. I skitter my bishops across the board carelessly. I start to develop pieces and get distracted, leaving my king vulnerable.

Hilly, who has played for years, wins every game. Today is no exception. He leans forward on his elbows, one hand catching his chin as he considers the board.

Chess brings out a meditative, zen-like side of him. Just when I think I have made a clever move, he presses back from another angle, resisting, forcing me to pay attention to what stands in my way.

Eventually, my king is alone, desperately trying to see his way around what prevents him from moving forward: a rook, a knight, a queen. His kingdom is reduced to an island of three squares. There’s nowhere else to go, so I take my index finger and topple my last piece, ending the game.

The sun slips behind the hill as we dismantle the game, and I find myself thinking about resistance. The things that push back against us, the parts of life that are anything but silken and easy and sure.

I close my eyes and think of Missouri, of the muddy river that ran near where I grew up. In my mind, I hear the water rushing over fallen branches and partially submerged logs. I feel the slick, moss-covered rocks beneath my feet, worn smooth by years of resistance.

I think of the beauty that exists in allowing resistance to shape and shift us. Of standing still in the face of a raging river, a contrarian cow, a bend in the path of life that beckons us to consider another route.

Maybe resistance can co-exist with the things that are for me. Maybe discomfort is part of the story, part of the change.

It’s getting dark now. Hilly and I get back into the car. We drive up the dirt path back home, the chess pieces rattling against each other as we navigate the dips in the road. We round the final corner in the path that leads home.

The cow is nowhere to be found. For now, the way forward is clear.

If you, too, have ever walked beside a cornfield, you’ll know it’s a land-bound ocean, made up of waves of green and shorelines of plowed dirt. It is strangely beautiful. Despite the neatly laid-out rows and precise placement of each plant, the stalks lean towards each other, creating shadowy portals that, as a child, I imagined leading into the underworld.

It seems so stupid to write, but corn is very much a part of my identity (and yes, I identify as a corn-fed woman).

I spent summers as a child planting corn and letting the pink dye from the sweetcorn kernels staining the palm of my hands. I eat my corn terribly, biting in random places instead of marching my teeth up and down the cob like a typewriter. A cornfield feels familiar. Comforting. Seeing one tells me that I’m home, or at least, I’m very close to it.

On my walk, I was overwhelmed by nostalgia.

Maybe it was the beauty of the rising sun over the rolling fields. Maybe it was the fact that I was back in the Midwest after nearly a year away, spent keeping a promise to myself that I wouldn’t run back here and let myself experience a different sort of ocean. But I felt God in that moment, a version of God that felt truer and closer than the one I had been chasing and rejecting in cycles for most of my life.

I couldn’t understand it.

I had spent eleven months trying to acclimate to the island, struggling to find clarity as wave after wave churned over me. If God was there on St. Croix, it felt like he1 was floating out in the ocean or winging over my head so quickly that I couldn’t get my arms around him. I could sense the spiritual wellspring of the island, yes, but it felt like it wasn’t mine to have.

So why here, next to the mundane corn fields I’ve always known? Why now? Why was God standing easily in the center of the waves of green, arms open wide and so, so real?

I wondered if this feeling was a sign I was supposed to come back. For good. Even as I whispered the sentiment to myself, I knew it wasn’t the truth.

The path I was walking on turned into an apple orchard. Morning dew studded the grass. Spiderwebs shone between branches of trees soon to be filled with fruit. Nature around me brimmed with life, in conversation with itself as I stood nearby, eavesdropping.

And then I heard God speak. No words were used, rejecting the notion I had as a child of hearing a booming man’s voice echoing in my mind. But God spoke to me all the same.

I was supposed to leave this place.

My relationship with the corn fields, with the Midwest, with where I’m from is like my relationship with God.

I’ve spent years running from both, trying to leave both behind and grow bigger and better than the pews of a church or the long lines of corn. Trying to figure out where they ended and I began. Trying to wipe the church kid off of my face and the Midwest out of my voice.

But next to a misty apple orchard outside of Belleville, Illinois, I realized the truth. I needed to leave both God and the Midwest completely to finally start to understand them for myself.

The path I was on bent, leading me by yet another corn field. I stopped walking and stood still for a long time, letting the weight of this moment sit heavy on my shoulders.

Around the plants nearest to the edge of the field, morning glories vined up the length of the stalks, their delicate blue-purple flowers unfolding sweetly in the strengthening light. A wild partner making herself known, a brave foil to constant sameness of the corn. The partnership was beautiful.

In that moment, I felt the wildness of the island coiling up around my steady and straight legs, around my heart, reminding me that I am both here and there. That God is here and there, ready to be discovered anew in the most unexpected ways.

All I have to do is keep looking for him.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve felt like writing again. It both scared and surprised me. Almost immediately, I felt pressure—pressure to make something cohesive, pressure to make what I have to say after so long really, really profound.

Lisa Olivera’s latest offering reminded me that showing up messy is showing up truthfully. I’ve felt like I’ve been digging around in the dirt lately, with nothing more to show for it than earth under my fingernails. But maybe that’s the stuff that I’m supposed to show right now.

I am scared to want things too much. I worry that, in the wanting, in the naming of my desire, I drive it away.

A few months ago, I received a beautiful reading from Jenn. I showed up chaotically, with a bad Internet connection and a mug of tea that I hadn’t let brew long enough. I don’t remember a lot of what she told me—I was fragmented, not fully present—but I remember that, at one point, I asked her whether it was in my chart that I would one day have a child.

She paused. I remember the pause.

“If you decide that you want it enough.”

I still think about her response. The wanting of things. Whether I can allow myself to fully desire something new, something I, for a long time, said I did not want.

I feel weak when I want, like a crumpled up version of myself, a paper doll dragged through a puddle and left to dissolve into the pavement.

I want to let myself want.

My friend Pardis is writing her dissertation.

I see her frequently, sitting in coffee shops or tucked up against a bar with a glass of wine, her computer open and her brow furrowed as she wades through ideas and words.

She tells me that she is tired of metaphors, of academics trying to make something else out of something that should just…be. She just wants to tell the stories of St. Croix, of the Caribbean, without the pressure of “adding to the discourse” or whatever term the ivory tower wants to use.

I ask her to tell me what she’s writing about.

She tells me about the baobab trees with their hollow trunks. Their seeds were carried by enslaved Africans to the island in mouths, in twists of hair, in closed hands—a talisman of protection, a rebellion. Women birth their children inside the spine of the tree. When the moon is full, the tree is believed to be a portal back to Africa. Step inside and return home.

I am fascinated by her stories, gleaned from conversations with those who are of the island, the true holders of history. I don’t know what it all means, but I don’t care. I just want to listen to her comb her fingers through the loose threads that she’s gathered.

Part of me thinks knitting them together into something will take away part of the magic.

Most evenings, I walk up a dirt road behind where I live.

There’s a place where the path splits. You can go up, or you can go down.

The first few times, I went down, where I knew the outcome. At the bottom of the hill, wasps waltz in and out of fermenting mangoes, squished by passing tires. A cluster of houses sighs next to the road. The stop sign is bent back and to the side. No one listens to it.

One day, I went up the hill instead. I was curious.

I walked past blown-out cars, their rusted carcasses sinking into the earth. The hollow pods of a stinking toe fruit tree1 rattled under my feet, making an empty sort of music.

The road moved sharply up. I began to sweat. My breath was loud, labored. I picked my way around hairpin turns, one after another, and then, finally, the world opened up.

I stood there, my shoulders heaving towards my ears, and I felt better than I had in a long time. I counted the orange flamboyant trees on the horizon and listened as the wavy tones of a distant radio wound their way across the hill.

When I began my walk, the air had been still, heavy. Now, it danced. It roared, it moved.

On Facebook, I saw a post by a friend entitled “MADE FROM SCRATCH.”

Beneath was a list of various foods—biscuits, pies, jellies—and my friend had noted which ones she had made from scratch.

I couldn’t get the phrase out of my head. Made from scratch.

It made me think of women in gingham dresses and frilly aprons, guiding rolling pins over pale circles of dough. Of cellar walls, lined with preserved peaches and briny okra. Of restaurants with homey decor and prices without dollar signs next to them.

It made me think of how the world values things made from scratch. And how much I expect myself to make from scratch.

My food. My art. My dreams. My body.

I knead flour and water and yeast into dough. I stretch and contort my limbs into shapes that I hope will let me live a little longer and better. I stop my ears like Odysseus and write in silence, scared to accidentally reference something I once read and liked.

I am tired of wanting to be made from scratch.

The other day, I watched a hen stand on a patch of dirt next to the road and dig her claws into the dust.

She scratched and scratched and scratched, kicking up clouds or particles and moving the earth until it yielded what she desired.

I longed to drop close to the ground with her and search, to claw and dig and pry and not make anything but find instead.

I’m learning to value what I find, even if I don’t know what it means or does or says. Even if I didn’t say it first or best.

I am deeply afraid of not having anything to say. But I am more afraid of saying nothing at all.

I feel like coming back to Everyday Woo. I’m leaning into that right now, but I’m not committing. No more business plans, weird monetization emails that ask you to pay me to write…I just can’t do it. I don’t want to do it.

But I do want to write. There’s so much I want to share—about St. Croix, about what energies I’m feeling, about what patch of dirt I’m digging through.

I’ll probably pop up in your inbox every so often. I do hope you write me back or tell me about your own dirt mining and what you’ve found.

Until then.

This particular newsletter was hard for me to publish, mostly because it meant that I had to admit what I’ve known since I moved to St. Croix: I don’t know who I am on the island. And this lack of identity has impacted my writing to the point where I just…can’t. At least not right now.

I tell my mother that she must have been a philosopher or a pastor or a really popular self-help author in a past life. Like me, she sees life through metaphor-tinted glasses: the smallest details—the crooked tree, the unexpected rainbow, the conversation in passing—spark deep thoughts about life and faith.

And like me, she writes about them from time to time.

I called her the other day, just to talk. Vent, really. I needed a Mom Mini-Sermon.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I told her. As I said this, I slumped to the concrete floor of the balcony outside of my apartment. Night had fallen. I was alone. The light of the streetlamp filtered through wind-tossed trees, creating eerie shadows across my legs.

I felt empty. Depleted. Spent. And ashamed.

I watched the waning moon peek in and out of light-rimmed clouds, passengers on a journey to cross across someone else’s sky. I listened to my mother do what she does best: offer advice.

“I took a picture the other day. Of an unusual cloud,” she mused, knowing that I, like her, can easily slip into the familiar comfort of a metaphor. I waited, expecting her to tell me what it all means. To weave together the everyday and the woo seamlessly.

Instead, she said, “Maybe you can write something about it.”

My chest seized at the thought of writing.

It was as if all of the clouds above me and around me and inside of me rushed to join together, cocooning me into this state of refusal. Of creative inertia. Of silence.

“You should send it to me,” I said, trying to keep the note of defeat out of my voice. I felt my phone buzz, but I refused to look at the picture.

I couldn’t bear to once again be reminded that I have nothing at all to say right now.

Hannah calls me a few days later.

I’m relieved to hear her voice, to see her face—without her saying a single word, I know she gets how I feel. I know that she, too, is speaking to me from the compost pile—a place where creative people go to decay and fall apart, in hopes that we will bloom again one day.

I tell her how terrible it feels to try to write these days. How awful it feels to see how beautiful and magical and spiritual the island clearly is and have nothing to say about it all.

Writing, the thing that has always felt the easiest for me, has become a heavy albatross around my neck, dropping me to my knees.

Writing, the thing that has always felt most like me, has become a river of sand, sliding through my fingers. I chase after it fruitlessly, because I don’t know who I am if not this.

Writing, the thing that has kept me sane, has become a panic button that I press, over and over again, hoping that something will come save me from the crushing, wordless silence.

Hannah nods her head silently as I speak, affirming me and validating me as I wallow in the compost of my identity. She looks so wise, dressed in forest green and leaning forward on her couch with the late-afternoon California light filtering in from behind.

She tells me what I don’t want to hear.

“You never took a break,” she points out. “Not really. And you need time. Rest. You need to let yourself settle. What would happen if you stopped?”

My brain screams no no no. My body cries out yes yes yes.

I know what I must do. I have to truly walk away.

This is the picture that my mother sent me.

I see myself in that half-formed mermaid tail of a cirrus cloud, trying to find her place in a new sky. My edges are raw, unformed, almost painful in appearance.

Undefined. Shifting.

When I decide to take up the pen to write about what I see when I look in the mirror, it is already too late. I have already changed. And to try to pin myself to the page, to trap myself in the confines of words, would be akin to telling a cloud to stop changing just so you can take a photo of it.

I need to break apart, knit back together, and break apart again and again. I need to wander for a bit. And maybe, eventually, I’ll cross back over this sky again. Maybe some other sky.

All in good time. For now, I wander.

Perhaps the most radical thing I will ever do as a writer is to know when I must stop writing.

If you are a subscriber of this publication, thank you. Thank you for believing in me and my words. I am pausing all paid subscriptions as of 2/10/2023. If you chose to support me under an annual membership and wish to receive a refund, please shoot me an email, and I’ll make that happen.

Writing that last paragraph was really, really hard for me.

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel like a failure, but truthfully, I know that continuing to write from the place I’m in right now would be counter to who I am as a creative person. I want to be authentic and true, and that’s hard to do when you have no idea who you are anymore. And it’s hard to know who you are when you’re constantly in motion.

I know this post feels like déjà vu—after all, didn’t I say I was taking a break back in December?

Yep. I did. But I didn’t really do it.

Capitalism, hustle culture, and my own inner critic told me that, if I stopped, I would never start again. And that message comes from a place of distrust of myself, something I’m hoping to heal in this time away from creating.

Again, thank you for reading my writing. See you later.

The Everyday

Hot dogs taste so much better by the beach

As a product of the ‘90s, I have experienced hot dogs in many forms:

• cut up and tossed into violently orange mac and cheese and paired with Fresca

• eaten from the iconic red-and-white checkered boxes at high school football games while wearing a sequined dance uniform.1

• proffered to me by a kind Scottish gentleman who wisely set up his hot dog cart at the foot of the Old Man of Storr hike.2

But the hot dog that I got from Dizzy Dawgz last weekend put all of my past hot dog experiences to shame. Hilly and I had just spent a single luxurious hour by the beach doing 0% of anything and were driving back to the apartment when the heavens opened up and a single column of light illuminated a humble hot dog cart.

We stopped. We bought two hot dogs. I tried to take an ~artsy~ photo of said hot dogs.

I know that this is the “everyday” section of the newsletter, but damn…eating that hot dog felt downright spiritual. Maybe it was the salt air. Maybe it was the generous dollop of relish (I am squarely Team Relish). Maybe it was my mostly empty stomach.

Either way, Dizzy Dawgz on STX is one roadside attraction that you should definitely pull over for. And for my non-meat eating readers, don’t you worry: they serve veggie dogs, too.

True Life: Island life isn’t perfect.

Some days, I take pictures like this:

And other days, I take pictures like this:

Yep. That is me getting cozy with a bunch of trash.3

Life on St. Croix is anything but predictable, and despite the many picturesque, carefree moments that I’ve captured in my four or so months here, there are just as many…uh…not ideal ones.

After taking a fabulous yoga and pilates class on Monday night at Island Movement, my friend Darean and I decided to head to El Leon for some chips, salsa and churros. On the way, it started to pour…and the only available overhang to shelter us from the sudden and severe island rains was conveniently located next to a very smelly dumpster.

Glamorous.

So. If you’re ever clicking through my Instagram stories and like, “ugh, her life sounds perfect,” just remember. Some days, I’m canoodling with black trash bags stuffed with God knows what.

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The Everyday

The whole internet knows how much money I have saved for retirement.

I’m not sure when I first started reading Refinery29’s Money Diaries, but it was only a matter of time before my nosy ass stumbled across this financially transparent little corner of the Internet. Each week, an email hits my inbox that makes my inner gossip cackle with delight: I get to peek inside the wallets of complete strangers and see how they choose to spend their hard-earned cash…plus all the juicy deets that go along with it.

About four days after I moved to STX, I thought, “hey! I should write a Money Diary!”

After all, money was definitely on my brain: I had no job, no prospects of one, and no idea how I was going to make island life work on a budget of exactly $01.

But in spite of some very real Money Sweats (TM), my first week was magical. I wanted my diary to strike a balance between the financial uncertainty I felt and the joy I experienced at finally, finally making the sort of change I had always dreamed about.

Anyone who’s published anything publicly2 on the Internet knows that the comments are like the Molasses Swamp in old school Candy Land: if you hang out there too long, you’ll get stuck and be forced to listen to the swamp monster Gloppy tell you all the ways you’re a terrible human being for existing and deciding to write about it.

Thankfully, the comments were pretty supportive overall, but one got me thinking:

Relatability is relevant, but I really believe in the sort of magic we make ourselves.

I know I am privileged to be able to uproot myself like this, but I didn’t sit around and wait for it to happen. And making a big ole change like mine is freakin’ hard. So I’m proud of myself for doing it…even if every single person on the Internet doesn’t agree with me.3

The universe gifted Girl Scout cookies to me!

This is a judgement-free zone, right? Pinky promise?

Hilly and I like to go on evening walks as much as possible to catch the sunset (the water is maybe a 7-minute stroll from our apartment), and I’m always on the lookout for random treasures along the side of the road. It’s a habit that has served me well—in St. Louis, I once found a slightly torn but still valid $100 bill just chillin’ on the sidewalk near where I lived.

Unfortunately, littering is a huge problem in St. Croix.4 I’ve seen sun-bleached boxes of Cheez-Its, busted beer bottles and an entire, rusted-out lawnmower abandoned next to the road. So I wasn’t too shocked when I stumbled across a box of Girl Scout cookies. They caught my eye because they were my favorite: Caramel Delites.

I nudged the box with my toe as I passed by, and I realized it was full. And still sealed. I looked at Hilly. He looked at me. “Should we?” I asked, tentatively. Who had I become? Was I seriously considering taking these Girl Scout cookies home and…eating them?!

Well, dear reader, I did it. I opened the box. The interior bag was still sealed. The cookies were intact. I knew what I had to do.

I ate the cookies. And they were very good. Thanks, universe.

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The Everyday

I island hopped, fell in love with Puerto Rico and maybe formed a coven.

If you follow me on the ‘gram (and the algorithm deigns to show you my stories), you probably caught a glimpse of last week’s trip to Puerto Rico. Last Friday, it felt like I had stepped into a portal when I boarded a black and pink propeller plane and, ~30 minutes later, appeared on a completely different island with a completely different vibe.

San Juan is like St. Croix’s trendy older sister who went to college and majored in design with a minor in cultural studies. The city itself reminds me of a mishmash of other places I’ve visited. It’s got the old world charm of France blended with the colorful expression of Mexico, with a dash of Mediterranean energy thanks to the pastel buildings and nearby ocean. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the narrow, cobblestoned alleyways. Everything felt tinged with magic.

I went on this trip with four other women who I knew a little before our four days together, and I can safely say that the magic carried over into the connections we made. We had a five-course fancy ass meal together on our first night, and at one point, we all passed around Quiana’s smoky whisky drink and each took a sip. After the last woman drank, Quiana insisted that we all make eye contact with each other.

“I think we just formed a coven,” someone, maybe Quiana, whispered solemnly, half joking but half serious. And by the end of the weekend, it kind of came true: we ended up dubbing ourselves the Penthouse Witches, a nod to our swanky Air BnB that had us all singing Fergie’s song Glamorous every time we got to press the PH button in the elevator.

Costco croissants are best when shared.

Over the course of our trip, we joked that each of us had our “mom energy” moment, where we stepped into a caretaking role for the group. Quiana led the pack (she’s an actual mom, unlike the rest of us), and since she arrived in PR before the rest of us, she did a Costco run for the apartment.

Once of her impeccable selections was a giant package of croissants, which became sort of a running joke throughout the weekend. Who knew Costco had such good croissants?! At the end of our trip, we had two remaining croissants, which Josie lovingly wrapped in paper towels and put in her purse for later.

Later ended up being in front of the Starbucks in the San Juan airport. Four of us huddled around The Final Croissant and picked and pulled it apart, looking not unlike a group of hungry pigeons situated in a Parisian gutter. It was like some weird version of communion…if the body of Jesus was a buttery, flaky French pastry.

I tried chocolate ketchup and it wasn’t that bad!

For brunch one day, we ended up at Chocobar Cortes, which, as the name implies, is a restaurant themed around chocolate. And they take that seriously: there’s chocolate in, like, everything. Even the salad dressing.

We all started with hot chocolates (I got the Montezuma, which had a lil kick to it) and more croissants (I opted for churros as my Carb of Choice). And keeping with the community theme of the weekend, we ordered a bunch of dishes to share: french toast, croquetas de jamón serrano, bacalaito (a pile of cod fritters), a ham and cheese sandwich made of mallorca bread, and more.

The sandwich came with fries and the aforementioned chocolate ketchup, which somehow worked in a salty/sweet sort of way. I’m a ketchup aficionado, so I feel confident in giving it my stamp of approval.

The Woo

The podcast that manages to make yeast sound spiritual:

Though my trip to Puerto Rico was refreshing, affirming and uplifting, going back to work was kind of tough. I felt really out of sorts for the rest of the week (I pulled the Ten of Swords at the end of our trip, and I was like 👀), so I was definitely in need of some grounding.

The On Being podcast is one that I turn to when I need to feel…something. Krista Tippett’s voice, paired with the spiritual, meaningful content, helps remind me of the bigger picture when all I can manage to focus on is the fact that I almost boiled a roach in my electric kettle in an attempt to make my morning coffee.1

Recently, On Being published a four-part Foundations series, which aims to provide some essential frameworks for being a human seeking purpose. They’re all very short (<15 minutes), and they all got me thinking about capital-L Life.

You should listen to the whole series, but #2, Living the Questions, is perhaps my favorite. I won’t spoil it for you, but this quote by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, will give you the gist:

What questions are you living right now?

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When your friend pulls the perfect card for you at the crystal shop:

The Penthouse Witches also did a lot of shopping in Puerto Rico, and after our chocolate-laden lunch, we wandered into a metaphysical store called Turquesa2, which had crystals, incense, cards, jewelry, and more. I was super stoked when a few of the other ladies expressed interest in cartomancy (and I even got to pull cards for everyone throughout the weekend), so we ended up looking through the decks they had.

We ended up pulling cards out of a oracle/practical magic deck called Wiccapedia Spell Deck. And I cracked up when Darean pulled this card for me:

My ex-husband and I *did* have an amicable divorce! And I totally sent the photo of the card to him. Yay for non-contentious breakups!

Women need to connect with other women IRL.

In case you haven’t picked up on it by this point in the newsletter, last weekend was really special to me. In a way, it cracked open something within me that has long been closed off, something that I’ve worked hard to heal within myself. I’ve written about friendship before and how hard it has been in the past for me to see myself as worthy of intimate, true connections with other folks, so being able to exist peacefully with other women meant a lot to me.

I think a big part of this magic lies in the fact that I didn’t set any expectations for this trip. None of us knew the others on a deep level, which strangely made it easier to open up. Perhaps my favorite moment was on the final morning of our time in Puerto Rico. We had just eaten breakfast (with croissants, of course), and we all just sat there and talked and shared about stuff that felt hard in life. Relationships, growth, figuring it all out…we just talked and held space for each other and healed together.

It was all so simple and organic. That’s what made it beautiful. The first episode of the On Being series talks about what Tippett terms “critical yeast,” or the fermentation process that happens when unlikely elements join together to create change. It’s like the change before the change. The quiet before.

And that’s exactly what happened this weekend—the five of us joined together and began to make…something. Maybe a croissant. Maybe a coven.

But we definitely started something. I’m excited to see what happens next.

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Since I went on this Everyday Woo hiatus a few things have happened with this newsletter:

-I lost some paid subscribers, but not as many as I thought I would. I guess that’s the risk I took when I decided to pull back, but I feel good that a lot of folks are supporting all facets of me, not just the ones that involve producing at the level I was.

-Speaking of production, I’ve realized that I need to change the model of Everyday Woo to make it more sustainable. I can’t sustain writing twice a week. I just can’t. I’m still fine-tuning the model, which I plan to roll out in February, but I do know that I have to honor the slower pace my body, heart and soul need. I’m looking for evergreen creativity.

-I’m coming back! To follow the energy of the next full moon in the sign of Leo (which occurs on February 5th), I’m planning on resuming public posts on February 7th. Do I know what I’m going to write about yet? NO. But write I shall. It’ll likely be shorter and lighter, but that sounds pretty Leo-esque to me.

I decided to send this post to everyone to let folks know that a) I’m still alive and b) I’m still writing. If you’re a free subscriber, read this, and think, “hey, I want more of this sort of stuff,” consider subscribing. Because this day-in-the-life, intimate type of writing isn’t going anywhere and will definitely be a part of my paid subscription model moving forward.

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Have an awesome weekend and eat a Costco croissant for me. There’s no Costco on St. Croix so truly, live life to the fullest. Get a hot dog while you’re at it.

The Everyday

This Eat Pray Love-esque text message exchange between me and my friend Beth:

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And now, for something completely different!

Well, kind of.

To be honest, I’ve been sort of dreading this moment. And it’s not because I don’t want to be here…because, honestly, I do. More than ever. It has more to do with the fact that coming back after essentially flouncing1 feels…tough. Very “tail tucked between my legs” energy.

I feel like I kind of fa…

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When I decided I was moving to St. Croix, I excitedly wrote a post on Everyday Woo and published it on all of my social media feeds. I was thrilled to share my choice with others, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t expecting everyone else in my life to be celebrating right alongside with me.

And since I’d been talking about this move for months…

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I wasn’t sure what I was looking at when I first saw the terrarium.

I don’t remember how old I was—maybe eight or so—but I remember exactly what it looked like.

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A glass jar that had once held pickles or applesauce or jelly poked up from the loamy Missouri soil, a sinking ship with its bow stretching to the sky one last time. The lid was long gone, jetsam lost in the passage of time. Any labels had disintegrated, rendering it impossible to tell how long it had lain there.

Inside, though, life raged forth.

The translucent sides were foggy with moisture in places, but I could still see the tiny world that thrived within the jar. Soil collected along the length, creating a sloping landscape that moss and lichen quickly colonized. Tiny, delicate ferns with sweetly-curled leaves breathed easy in the terrarium, nurtured by the humid air trapped inside. A beetle picked its way through the scene, a gentle Godzilla on an adventure.

More than anything, I wanted to hold that jar in my hands. I wanted to carry it home and watch the miniature ecosystem shift and grow.

But I understood, even then, that I had to leave it where it was. The jar had ceased to become just a jar. Its original function—whatever it had been—no longer mattered.

In order to become the beautiful terrarium it now was, it needed to be left alone.

Two days ago, I went on a hike with my friends Darean and Sarah.

Darean was our scoutmaster for the excursion, having hiked this particular trail a few times before. When describing it to us, she explained that we’d be walking through an abandoned dairy farm.

I had no concept of what that would be like, but I was intrigued. I’ve always felt drawn to places that have been abandoned. I guess it’s because I love stories, and abandoned places are full of those—imagined and real. 

It was easy for me to picture my elderly neighbor down the road, Richard, standing in the corner of the old schoolhouse near my childhood home, clutching his lunch pail. It was easy for my sister and me to concoct harebrained stories of murder and hauntings about the house down the road with blown-out windows that had stood empty for years.

I figured the dairy farm would be the same.

I would walk through it and see the faint outline of workers busy tending to a long line of black-and-white spotted cows. I would hear the soft swishing sound of milk against metal. I would believe that I could smell the strange blend of sweet hay and sharp manure.

But that did not happen. I did not see the dairy farm as it once was.

Instead, I saw it as it is.

Air and sunlight rushed through the gaping holes where parts of the roof had succumbed to rust and wind. The dozens of metal arms that once corralled cows into place stood motionless, curled legs still attached to the husk of a long-dead cicada.

As I wandered farther into the belly of the building, I was overwhelmed with the signs of decay.

The wooden platforms I stepped on gingerly were soft where they should be firm. Tangled clusters of old dairy tubing, yellowed with age, were tossed in corners. Everywhere I looked, I saw trash: rusted cans, crumbling plaster, and disemboweled breaker boxes with their colorful wires spilling out.

But despite this, life was not absent.

Hornets nests clung to eaves clogged with broken branches and to the rusted railings that surrounded the perimeter of the building. The insects flew in and out of their paper kingdoms at regular intervals, content to take over where they were once not wanted. Funnily enough, in the pile of trash, I spotted several cans of Raid, which had clearly done little to thwart the hornets.

The building itself seemed to still be breathing. It shuddered in the breeze, a dying nervous system firing for one last time. And when the wind really picked up, the sheet metal roof screamed and groaned and shrieked, causing me to jump and wonder what kind of spirits would haunt an old dairy farm.

But that’s the thing. It wasn’t really a dairy farm anymore. Like that old jar from my childhood, in its abandonment, the building had transformed into something else.

Nature had reclaimed it. A different sort of life had colonized it. And a new, raw beauty was emerging.

I guess I’m telling you that, in a way, I am like the dairy farm. Like that forgotten jar half-buried in the dirt.

I feel like a building that needs to be abandoned for a time.

I want to embody a forgotten house that now has a tree for a roof. I want to become the rusted-out hull of a ship, tossed up on the sand and covered with barnacles. I want to be a statue covered with lichen, an old radio tossed in the woods that has mushrooms for dials, a forever-parked car with squirrels nesting where an engine once was.

This is my way of telling you that I need to be left alone for a time.

I need to stop trying to cut back the vines that curl up around me. I need to let them grow for once because I want to know who I am when I am allowed to just…be.

Creatively speaking, this means that, for the first time in quite awhile, I need to stop writing.

It’s time to allow my mind to become overgrown. I imagine weeds and wildflowers growing out of my head, exactly the sort of place where life wants to take refuge. Like a tiny field mouse who builds his nest in the deepest folds of the tall grass, I hope that the most vulnerable and delicate ideas will come once I create a space that is safe enough for them.

I have spent a big chunk of my life trying to standardize and schedule out my creativity. I have treated my writing like a bush that needs to be cut into the shape of a dolphin, and the only way to do that is to be constantly pruning and shaping it.

But I’m deeply curious about what might come out if I just…don’t.

At least for awhile.

The close of one year and the opening of the next feels like a good time to pause. To allow. And to observe the ecosystems that arise when I stop trying to manufacture them.

This will be my last post in 2022. I’m not sure when I’ll return—hopefully, it will be later rather than sooner, because I tend to let my anxiety thrust those shears back into my hands the moment I feel uncomfortable with my choice to walk away.

I’m abandoning Everyday Woo so that it can become something different. And I hope you’ll be here when I return.

Have you ever walked away from something for a time with the intention to return? What shifts occurred when you chose to abandon something you once tended closely to?

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I feel like I say this a lot, but one of my biggest wishes with this newsletter is to deeply connect with others. And I recognize that the nature of a newsletter doesn’t exactly lend itself to that—I certainly don’t always want to bare my soul in the comments.

Even though I am putting Everyday Woo on pause for now, I would still love to talk with you. Even if it’s just a short thought or two about what I wrote, it still lights me up to know that someone wants to engage with me.

So if you’ve ever thought about doing so, send me an email. Leave a comment. Message me on Instagram.

I really do mean it when I say that I love connecting with people who are thinking about life deeply—the practical, the spiritual, and that big expanse in between.

I know I said I’m abandoning Everyday Woo for a time, but I’m not abandoning the relationship aspect of this newsletter. I’d love to connect.

Until we meet again, wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a beautiful start to 2023.

I tend to get hyper fixated on songs.

If I hear something I like (usually courtesy of the weekly playlists Spotify generates for me), I will listen to it over and over and over again. In the car. While cooking dinner. During the walks I try to take most evenings after work.

I’ll put it on my yoga playlists and use it as the soundtrack for the Instagram s…

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In the corner of my mind, there’s a shelf.

On it sits presents that I have received over the years, organized in chronological order. Not every present is there—only the ones that, for whatever reason, have stuck with me.

To the left is a Doodle Bear that I begged and begged for one year, its hot pink color an aggressive testament to the late ‘90s. The stuffed bear showed up under the tree that Christmas, courtesy of my adopted grandmother, who had listened to me squeal every time a commercial advertising it came on. I spent all of three weeks drawing all over its squishy body with a washable marker before abandoning it.

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Next to it is a yellow tube of roll-on body glitter from Bath and Body Works that smelled like artificial pineapples—a gift for my 11th birthday. Middle school me was dying to fit in with the girls who wore butterfly clips and blue mascara. I was convinced that, with one swipe across each of my cheekbones, I would be one step closer to being someone worth noticing.

A little further down is a first-generation iPod with my name etched on the back that my mother surprised me with when I was a junior in high school. I spent the rest of Christmas day excitedly uploading as much of my music library as I could, which was mostly comprised of bootleg songs sourced from Xanga.

If I visit that shelf in my mind and look at it for a long time, one thing becomes clear: I have no idea where any of these things are now. And I don’t remember them because of how cool they were or how much of an impact they had on my life. It was never about the physical present itself.

It was about the experience of opening them.

I am not fond of forced gift-giving.

In fact, I downright hate holidays that expect me to source a thing to give to someone. It feels inauthentic at best and a performative shuffling around of money at worst. I don’t do well under pressure, preferring to stumble across the perfect present in a thrift shop or on a random trip to the store without a deadline breathing down my back.

And don’t get me started on gift wrapping. I’m terrible at it—my presents are the sort that you have to place just right under the tree to avoid calling even more attention to the mismatched edges, copious use of Scotch tape, and uneven corners.

Because of this, at some point in my adult life, when the holidays rolled around, I switched to gifting experiences.

Over the past decade or so that I’ve been doing this, I’ve gifted cooking classes, food tours, tickets to museums, and pottery-making classes. I’ve taken my partner out for a nice meal and purchased acupuncture treatments for my sister.

Sure, opening a card with a print-out inside or clicking on an email that gleefully announces that a gift certificate is inside isn’t quite as fun as tearing into a beautifully-wrapped air fryer, but I’d argue that my way of doing things gets closer to those intangible feelings that make a gift truly memorable.

After all, like my Doodle Bear and my pineapple glitter and my iPod, most gifts end up in the trash, donated or broken by the time the holidays roll around again. The cycle repeats. The shelves are filled—temporarily—but only a small percentage of what is given truly stays in our memories.

But an experience? It’s so much bigger than a gift that can be easily placed on the mental shelf in my mind—a shelf that grows fainter and emptier with each passing year.

Instead, experiences are like the spiny, zig-zag cactus plants that I see when I take my evening walks on the island: they never stop growing.

In my life, I’ve been handed the gift of experience many, many times.

But I haven’t always wanted to accept it.

Throughout my life, I’ve made a list of the things I want: a house, a cool job, a partner who loves me, a steadily-growing business, a supportive group of friends. I’ve sent that list to the universe—I’ve set intentions, I’ve meditated, and I’ve been clear about what I want. I expect the universe to take a look at my list, nod its head, and to go shopping for exactly what I asked for. And I expect there to be no surprises when I unwrap my gifts.

But instead, what usually happens is an exchange that is less Secret Santa and more white elephant. The universe hands me something that feels like a joke: the whoopee cushion or ugly Christmas sweater of experiences falls in my lap, and I find myself scratching my head and wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do with…this.

When I decided to move to St. Croix, I expected the universe to gift me with an experience that was easy, magical and aligned. Before I moved, I visualized exactly what I wanted. I expected a montage of beach walks, instant connections and scenes from a fulfilling job to begin playing the moment I set foot on the island.

But instead, the universe has handed me one interesting experience after the other: from screaming at a giant cockroach that was chilling in the corner of my new apartment to paying to get my car licensed twice because the temporary tag given to me fell off after one day, at times, the Crucian gift of experience has felt like…anything but. It’s been more like lifting the lid on a box and discovering a rum cake when you’ve lived your entire life believing that rum cake is gross1.

It’s tempting to look at these experiences and to simply dismiss them as bad luck. And while I agree that it’s best not to dwell on what doesn’t quite go to plan, I have to wonder: what would it mean to truly see these uncomfortable, not-on-my-list moments as…gifts? How would it feel to take the white elephant present and to believe that it will eventually become clear why it was handed to me?

When I begin to think of experiences in this way, everything changes.

The huge pay cut I took when accepting a new job suddenly becomes the gift of work-life balance: I no longer feel bad when closing my computer at the end of the day.

The limited selection and exorbitant shipping costs on the island transforms into the gift of mindfulness: I am more thoughtful about what I buy and consider what I truly need.

The delay in getting my own yoga class to teach on the island is the gift of patience: I have the time to consider what I truly want to offer to those I hold community with through yoga.

Though these gifts aren’t always the easiest to unwrap—they sort of remind me of the time that my brother thought it would be “really funny” to wrap all of my Christmas presents in duct tape—the end result is so much more satisfying.

This year, I’m asking for experiences for Christmas.

I’m asking for a hike through the rainforest with a backpack filled with a picnic lunch and a bottle of wine. I’m asking for an afternoon spent trying to stand up on my inflatable paddleboard for more than three minutes. I’m asking for an early morning out east at Point Udall, watching the sun rise.

I’m asking for more moments that challenge me. Moments that reshape me. Moments that help me grow and think bigger than a life spent collecting things that sit on shelves.

And I have a pretty good feeling that, thanks to the universe’s generosity, I’m going to get everything on my list this year.

When have you received the gift of experience in your life…even when it wasn’t exactly on your wish list? I’d love to hear about moments that have challenged and shaped you.

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Cards for Humanity: The Page of Cups

I can’t remember who pointed it out to me, but it always makes me laugh that the young man depicted in the Page of Cups is wearing a hat that looks suspiciously like the live fish peering out of his cup. To me, there’s an implied message about giving the semblance of doing something in lieu of actually doing it: it’s the difference between wearing a leather skirt and lassoing a cow. One is a lot more challenging than the other.

The youthful Page of Cups is confronted with a moment that catches him off guard. Up until this point, the only connection he’s had with the water behind him is the sort that is contained in his very small cup and the fashion statement he wears on his head. The true wildness of the element of water is unknown to him—he’s never experienced what it feels like to step into the ocean and submerge himself in it.

The fish that appears in his cup is a sign—it’s an invitation to jump out of the cup and into the wild water, and it’s also the harbinger of experience, the sort that is wholly unexpected and not exactly pleasant. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be exactly thrilled if a slimy fish appeared while I’m trying to hydrate myself.

The universe works like this sometimes—it throws a wrench in our plans or, in this case, a fish in our cups. It forces us to pay attention to an area of our life where we need to grow and leave the comfort zone of the small space we’re used to. Truthfully, the page is in a predicament when we meet him: he has to decide what the heck to do with this unexpected, unsolicited gift. Should he ignore it and look the other way, risking the fish jumping out of the cup and flopping noisily all over the place? Or should he walk to the water’s edge, release it…and perhaps follow it into the depths?

When the Page of Cups appears in a tarot reading, it’s time to consider what unexpected gifts you’re receiving and how you might unwrap them with curiosity, not suspicion. Especially when dealing with times that test your emotions, the Page reminds us that we don’t have to necessarily understand the meaning behind every off-the-wall moment in life…but sometimes, it’s worth taking a closer look at the bizarre. It might just help you grow in a new, beautiful direction.

The Page of Cups is:

• a white elephant gift that unexpectedly becomes your new favorite thing

• winning a free glass-blowing class in the work holiday raffle

• the friendly mice that help Cinderella get ready for the ball

• a sense of deja vu while visiting a new place

• a vivid dream you have while taking a nap in the middle of the day

  

The gift of experience

Speaking of giving experiences as gifts, here are a few that I think are absolutely worth adding to your list:

An acupuncture session with my friend Dr. Melanie Chieng at the Golden Door

A channeled guidance session with intuitive Chelsea Jewel (I can vouch for this one—she’s read my chart!)

A queer yoga class with my friend Cassidy at Finding Normal

A windows + mirrors live year-ahead tarot reading with yours truly :)

Wishing you a wonderful last few weeks before the holidays + all the experiences you need to make this a season worth remembering.

For most of my adult life, Sunday has been a mixed bag of a day.

When I think of the last day of the weekend, I think of sitting through long church sermons as a child, crossing my fingers that my dad would take us to Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet after the service was finally over.

I think of rainy, sleepy days spent holed up in a study carrel, thumbing…

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On Friday morning, I sat in the front seat of the car I had just bought while Hilly drove east.

In my lap sat a manila folder of carefully-organized documents: a lease with my name on it, a title with the fresh embossment of a notary’s stamp, and a myriad of other papers necessary to finally, finally get my little car “island official.”

We were headed to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles1. I was not excited.

I thought back to a few weeks earlier, when Hilly and I had sat at the bar with our friends (and salsa instructors) Jennifer and Garincha. The discussion turned to “island-isms” that I, as a newly-minted islander, would have to face in the coming weeks. My highest priority at the time was to find a car—I had sold mine back on the mainland, deeming my zippy little hatchback with heated leather seats as better suited for Midwestern winters, not the humid, pothole-riddled island.

I told Jennifer and Garincha as much, and Jennifer laughed and offered up a cautionary tale about the BMV. “There’s this one man who works there,” she said, twirling pasta on her fork. “He’s…surly.” She told me a story about driving a car that she had just purchased to get inspected and having to deal with the aforementioned surly man.

“He barks orders at you, and if you get them wrong, he treats you like the stupidest person in the world. And if you talk back…well…your car isn’t going to get registered that day. Or ever. I’m not sure because I kept my mouth shut.”

The idea of keeping my mouth shut when getting berated by a man on a power trip struck fear into my heart—after all, I’m terrible at not snapping back when someone is rude to me.

But at that moment, I didn’t have a car, and I didn’t have to worry about the Autocrat of Automobiles. I put it out of my mind, telling myself that surely, surely that same guy couldn’t be working when the day arrived to get my own car registered.

Despite growing up in a series of small towns throughout my youth and early 20s, when I moved to St. Croix, I didn’t immediately recognize how small the island really is.

Geographically speaking, the island is 28 miles long and 7 miles wide. It covers an area of 84 square miles (in contrast, St. Louis City only covers 66). It takes about thirty minutes to drive from one side to the other--unless traffic is held up by a loose horse or two long-lost friends who decide that the middle of the road is the perfect place to catch up.

The island is rugged, wild and expansive in its topography, but when it comes to the interpersonal aspect, it is decidedly insular. If you stay on St. Croix long enough, people will start to know you—if not by your name, they’ll know you by your car, the path you walk when you’re out for a stroll, or the job that you do.

If, at the end of a long day, you start to tell a story about a particularly rude cashier at the grocery store or one about the guy down the street who owns 16 dogs that bark at a rate of 45 woofs per minute, it’s entirely likely that the person listening to your tale will say, “oh, I know who that is.”

That’s how small the island is. Small enough that there’s no need for six degrees of separation. It’s more like two.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when, on the day of my BMV visit, we pulled into one of the two stalls at the inspection, uh, shelter and out walked a very…surly-looking man.

He was stocky, short in stature, and his face had that pulled quality of someone who spends a lot of time grimacing.

He swung his arm around wildly in a circular motion, gesturing us to pull up further. Suddenly, I was glad that it was Hilly behind the driver’s seat, not me. My palms began to sweat. I felt like I had in the moments before I took the ACT in high school. Though I knew what was on the test—turn signals, high beams and reverse lights—in the moment, everything I knew about this car and driving in general flew out of my head.

Hilly, ever the charmer, immediately sensed this man’s cloudy demeanor and turned his likeability factor up to eleven. He rolled down the window, flashed his winning smile, and said, “How are you, sir? Glad it’s Friday?”

The man didn’t even look at him. “Give me your documents,” he said.

I handed Hilly the folder. Everything was in there, including a few duplicate items and information that we only needed for the registration portion of the process, not the inspection we were currently facing. Hilly reached inside, beginning to shuffle the papers. The man saw his opportunity to gripe, and pounced.

“You come here and you aren’t even prepared. Not even prepared! You drive up to my station and waste my time! Give me your documents!”

By this point, any doubts about whether this was the same grumpy man Jennifer had faced over a year ago were gone. Hilly began to get out of the car, hopeful that this would help. It did not help.

“Did I say to get out of the car? You mainlanders, thinking that you can do whatever you want.”

Hilly got back into the car, silent now.

“For the last time, give me your documents!” I took the folder and handed it out of my window to the man, fearful that, if I didn’t, he would burst into flames.

“Finally,” he said, turning his back on us. He began to shuffle through the stack. A few tense moments passed, and I watched him out of the corner of my eye—I was pretty sure that any direct eye contact with him would turn me into stone.

His back still to us, he began to rattle off commands.

“LEFT TURN SIGNAL!”

“EMERGENCY BRAKE!”

“WINDSHIELD WIPERS!”

It reminded me of the old-school game Bop-It—if we didn’t react fast enough, we’d lose and have to slowly reverse out of the BMV, our tailpipe tucked between our legs.

Thankfully, I’m partnered with someone who stays cool in moments of stress. Hilly breezed through each of the steps (I helped by punching the emergency flasher button—Punch It!), and finally, the man thrust our manila folder back at us…now, with a very important slip of paper stapled to it.

This was our ticket to ride. Well, almost. There was one more step in our BMV adventure, but at least we’d gotten over the troll’s bridge without losing much more than our dignity.

With the proper documents in hand, Hilly and I backed out of the tiny shed (shockingly, Surly Man did *not* wave goodbye to us) and drove approximately 30 feet over to another small cluster of trailers.

The narrow buildings reminded me of teaching and the sad, isolated classrooms relegated to the outskirts of a school campus. We walked up the wooden steps and stepped inside Round Two of the BMV Experience.

A long swath of plexiglass stood between us and the handful of workers, their faces barely visible behind their computer screens. A carefully-placed garland ran the perimeter of the front desk, reminding me that it was, after all, December. A chorus of “good mornings” echoed throughout the tiny trailer, courtesy of the folks who sat awaiting their own ticket to ride.

We walked over to the window labeled with the number 1. Hilly, a little miffed that Surly Man had been impervious to his charm, decided to try his luck with the expressionless woman who sat at the desk.

“I just want to know if I can get one of those Charm Pops!” he exclaimed, pointing to the half-filled bag of lollipops that slumped behind the woman’s chair.

She stared at him. I laughed nervously.

“License and documents, please,” she said.

I handed them over. She rifled through them and tapped a few keys on her computer.

“Take a seat. They’ll call you when they’re ready.” She paused. “There’s a basket of candy over there,” she added as an afterthought. “Don’t eat it all.”

Hilly grinned. Victory. He made a big show of going over and choosing a strawberry Charm Pop. I tentatively took a cherry one, half expecting someone to pop out and tell me to get the hell out of this trailer—no license for me.

We sat and waited. Hilly slurped his lollipop. I chewed mine up anxiously.

Official-sounding stamps began to fill the room. Hilly looked at me and leaned over, his sucker stick dangling out of his mouth like a skinny cigarette.

“That’s the sound you want to hear.”

My name was called. I stood. The moment of truth was upon me.

I walked forward, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I waited for the agent behind the desk to deliver the bad news that I would have to perform no fewer than fifteen arduous tasks in order to be worthy of driving the pothole riddled roads of St. Croix. I waited for my precious manila folder to catch fire and turn to ash, rendering all of my documentation useless.

Instead, she handed me a temporary tag, charged me $140 and sent me on my way after telling me to come back in three months for my permanent VI license plates.

Hilly didn’t even have a chance to put a dent in that candy basket. The island BMV was that fast. From start to finish, we were only there for 25 minutes.

As we walked out into the morning sunlight, I thought back to all of the mundane, colorless DMV experiences I have had in my adult life. They all blur together, a compilation of faceless people, beige walls, stress, and long, long lines.

But today? I don’t think I’ll ever forget the surly man, the lollipop basket, or the unlabeled trailers that actually house one of the most important government agencies on the island. And most of all, I’ll never forget how…easy it all was, despite my fears otherwise.

Everything here is a story, I thought to myself. Even the BMV.

Just when I think I have the island sort of, kind of figured out, it surprises me. The stories I’ve known for years—like how registering your car will go—are being rewritten, island style.

St. Croix is keeping me on my toes.

And I kind of like that.

What unexpectedly thrilling stories have come out of pretty mundane moments? What old narratives have been turned on their heads lately? And bonus: does your DMV have a Surly Man at it too? Share below.

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Hope you enjoyed this tiny glimpse into island life. If you want more of these narrative-style pieces, my paid subscribers receive one every Friday.

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Even though I keep forgetting that the holidays are almost here (85-degree temperatures and sunny days will do that to you), the lights that went up around the island last weekend are helping me remember that 2022 is winding down.

What a year it’s been—one of massive change and a whole lot of love. Thanks for reading Everyday Woo and being a part of my very magical year.

I was a late bloomer when it came to Reddit.

I was born in 1988, which means that I grew up with the pterodactyl screech of dial-up internet, an AIM account, and the knowledge of what A/S/L means. I have lurked in chat rooms, posted on Tumblr, and scattered a handful of dead blogs across the World Wide Web. But somehow, Reddit remained a corner of the In…

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I walked into the laundromat, dodging people hunching over open dryers and wire baskets spilling over with clothes, their damp sleeves and hems like lolling dog tongues on a hot day.

Over the symphonic hum of the machines, I caught snippets of conversations: holiday recaps, complaints about missing socks, and long-suffering sighs while watching the endless churn of fabric against metal. 

A gentle breeze pushed through the open-air facility. As I looked to the back of the building, I could see the empty field just outside of the laundromat, where the tall grass swayed, creating a funny juxtaposition between the industrial rows of Speed Queen machines and the bucolic place just steps away. 

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Hilly was sitting on a bench on the border of these two worlds. He was silhouetted in sunlight, looking every bit like Rodin’s Thinker. His brow was wrinkled. He was staring intently at the laundry machine in front of him, almost as if he was trying to figure out how it all worked. 

“It’s not working,” he said to me as I approached. 

Indeed, the washing machine definitely was not washing. Our clothes spun aimlessly against a dry canister. No water rushed in. The orange arm of the old-school timer was stuck, refusing to advance the cycle forward. 

Considering that we had fed the generously-sized Speed Queen $7.50 in quarters in exchange for some clean clothes, we decided it was necessary to ask for help. And help arrived, in the form of a middle-aged man and his 14-year-old son. He introduced himself as Anuar and began to methodically remove the front panel to the misfiring machine. 

As he worked, Hilly began to talk to him, as he always does in moments like these. One of my favorite things about my partner is his ability to make conversation with anyone, about anything. Unsurprisingly, within minutes, we had learned that Anuar was from Palestine originally, had lived in St. Croix for over two decades, and had found everything from bra wires to a wrench lodged inside of his washing machines over the years. 

As he examined the machine, he told us stories about once owning the only gas station on the island with an eye wash machine, due to a health inspector with a long-held grudge. He told us about his family—besides his son, he had two daughters and a wife, who he pointed out to us across the room.

Eventually, the conversation turned to the island itself, a pattern I have noticed in my short time living here. People love to talk about St. Croix.

“How long are you visiting for?” Anuar asked. Hilly explained that we actually lived here. 

“Do you love it?” Anuar asked, chuckling as if he already knew the answer. Hilly said that he did. Anuar smiled knowingly, as a shared understanding passed between the two of them. 

“It’s a special place. I visited my cousins in Jersey a few months ago. And you know what? I couldn’t wait to get back home. Life is different here. We live in the moment.” 

“You know what’s funny?” he continued. “My cousin, he is always stressed. Thinking about work. Can you believe that he plans for days that are two weeks away?!”  

I laughed and nodded, knowing full well that I was all too much like his cousin. Just that morning, I had stressed about having enough vacation days to take all of the trips I want: to Belize, back home, to Thailand. Anuar continued as he pried the front off of the Speed Queen, exposing her dusty guts for all the world to see. 

“My laundromat got broken into a few weekends ago, and you know what I did? I closed up for a few days and didn’t worry about it. I went to a wedding in Chicago. I said, ‘I’ll deal with it later.’ And I did.”

“It was fine. There’s so much to worry about in life. But here? We don’t worry so much. Instead, we celebrate EVERYTHING. Even when there’s nothing to celebrate.” 

Anuar adjusted a few more screws, and just like that, water began to rush into the barrel, soaking our clothes and moving the cycle forward. I clapped my hands together softly and released a tiny hurrah from my lips. It disappeared quickly, absorbed into the piles of fabric that surrounded me.

I thought back to the night before, when I had stretched out in the hammock strung over our porch and watched an impromptu, unexpected fireworks show dot the horizon. I had asked around, curious as to the reason behind such an intentional display, but no one knew why the fireworks had been launched.

I guess the point was that there didn’t need to be a reason.

That afternoon, as Anuar packed up his tools and shook Hilly’s hand, ending with the now-familiar fist against the chest gesture passed between Crucians, I thought about what it would mean to live a life where everything was celebrated.  

Even if there wasn’t really a reason to celebrate.  

When I think of the word ‘celebration,’ my mind fills up with memories of birthday parties and blurry New Years Eve parties. I associate the verb “to celebrate” with scarcity—the gatherings are few, and most are annual.

When I was a kid, along with my siblings, I cut out strips of construction paper and looped them together into a long, red-and-green chain with enough links to count down the days until Christmas. We’d tear one off each day, moving the needle one tick closer to the moment designated for celebration.

I remember a sickeningly sweet feeling of anticipation in my stomach as the number of loops lessened. It was almost painful to wait.

I suppose that I have lived my life like this. Unlooping one paper link after another, patiently awaiting some cosmic permission to cut loose, unwrap gifts, and eat way too much food. I have lived believing that what is termed special loses its shine if I take too big of a portion—if I choose to celebrate everything, perhaps life will lose its luster.

If I celebrate everything, perhaps that paper chain will catch fire and incinerate every shred of meaning in the process.

After all, I have lived with that chain of restraint tightly wound around my neck, forcing me to reserve the sort of full-bodied celebration I long to release for moments with time limits on them.

Living this way has left me with a post-celebratory hangover, the kind that isn’t brought on by alcohol or too little sleep. When the gifts are unwrapped and that final loop is torn apart, I struggle to return to the austere, mundane life that is devoid of the sparkle and shine of celebration.

I believe that the party cannot last forever. And I find it hard to wait so long to feel it again.

On the day after Thanksgiving, I drove east with Hilly to wander around the streets of Christiansted during a local festival called Jump Up. As with the random fireworks, I asked those who had lived on the island for much longer than me to explain the origins of Jump Up.

No one really knew. It’s a celebration, they told me. Don’t overthink it.

I tried not to ask a lot of questions that night as I stood in front of a steel drum band preparing to play. People formed a half circle around them, phones raised in the air with thumbs poised to press record.

Those first bright notes were like fireworks, exploding in my ears with the full spectrum of colors. I marveled at how easy it was to stand there and absorb all of the sensations of the moment: the rhythm of the drums, the sway of the crowd, the brush of shoulders against mine as other people moved past me.

Later, the moko jumbies appeared.

These tall stilt walkers were dressed in traditional garb that shone against the night sky as they danced and flirted with the crowd. According to tradition, these funny figures are actually fierce protectors—their extreme height allowed them to see over the west African villages they originated from and to warn the community of any approaching threats, be they physical or spiritual.

The moko jumbies slowly made their way down the streets. I followed them, entranced by their magic.

I wondered what it felt like to be a moko jumbie.

To see the celebration roaring at their feet—the long lines of folks waiting for roti and shaved ice, the local artisans spreading their handmade jewelry out on tables—and to also be able to see the perimeter of the celebration and understand the shape it made as the crowds shifted and grew and, eventually, receded as the night wore on.

But later that night, as the streets cleared, the last pates were sold, and the vendors packed up their wares, I didn’t feel that sense of sadness that so often colonizes me in the moments after the celebration is over. Strangely, it was almost as if the celebration had no shape at all.

There was no clearly defined beginning or ending or purpose to this joy that I could see…and because of that, it was easy to let the magic follow me home and linger around me like smoke after a particularly spectacular fireworks finale.

As I write this, I’m not sure that feeling has worn off or blown away.

I returned to work today, but the transition didn’t feel nearly so heavy—the undone paper chain wasn’t staring at me from the trash, so to speak. It had never existed at all.

As Anuar said, Crucians need no excuse to celebrate (just take a look at the list of public holidays—there are more than two dozen). Maybe there’s no need to search for an excuse or reason to celebrate life, something that feels more deserving than just…living.

I think the moko jumbies that prowled the streets during Jump Up were protecting celebration.

They stood, watching vigilantly, and cast a protective perimeter around the entire island, sealing it against the tired narrative that celebrations are to be rationed and saved for certain days on the calendar.

Because, as I am learning from costumed figures on stilts and kind laundromat owners, celebration begets celebration. When you celebrate everything, life becomes one endless opportunity to find joy.

It felt appropriate to write about celebration this week, seeing as we’re about to head into December, which is traditionally packed full of celebratory moments. I’m curious about how you make time for everyday celebration, inside and outside of the holiday season. Do you believe that celebrations lose their magic when we have many of them? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Cards for Humanity: The Nine of Cups

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the idea of a champagne waterfall. You know what I’m talking about, right? Some really rich and fancy person claps their hands, and a fleet of waitstaff decked out in black tie attire set up a pyramid of delicately fluted champagne glasses.

Once the precarious structure is in place, copious bottles of bubbly (probably not the cheap ass André I’m accustomed to buying for my mimosas) are popped and poured into the topmost glass. It overflows, eventually spilling the champagne down to the next tier. And so on and so forth until you have a very pretty but not very functional centerpiece for your next cocktail hour.

I always think of a champagne waterfall when I think of the Nine of Cups. Truthfully, I don’t love the Smith Rider Waite illustration1 that accompanies this card, mostly because it feels pretty static for a card that, to me, is full of motion and movement.

I like the interpretation that is given by the Field Tarot, which showcases cups that are spilling over with bounty and able to pour into the cups of others. Like the iconic waterfall, in the energy of the Nine of Cups, we’re not too worried about spilling or wasting the precious liquid. We trust that there’s more where that came from.

This card is about fulfillment, abundance and giving without worrying about the return. It feels appropriate for the holiday season, as this is a time to celebrate with abandon and to not limit ourselves emotionally with what we can share with other. Often termed “the wish card,” the Nine of Cups is a sign that we are finally reaping what we have sown long ago in our relationships and in our approach to life. We feel called to celebrate—and not just one time before we call it quits. It’s time to enter into a lifestyle of joy, love and acknowledgement of the everyday celebratory energy of life itself.

When the Nine of Cups appears in a reading, it’s time to sit back and to appreciate the bountiful beauty of life. It’s time to be generous, with yourself and others, especially in the area of your emotions and expressing them to their fullest extent. Let it all pour out of you and see how, when you let it flow, the universe tends to open up another bottle, so to speak.

I hope you find many, many reasons to celebrate this week.

Last year, I spent Thanksgiving with my family in South Carolina.

November in the Carolinas is warm still, but the sort of warmth that has cold in the wings, waiting for its chance to stroll on to the scene. The roads are scattered with dying pine needles and browning leaves. The air is tinged with the smell of bonfires, roasting turkeys, and a bit of su…

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