The end of August is here and finds me looking both behind me at the year that has been and ahead at the year that will be. There are emotions here, but also thoughts, and relationships. This trivium tends to make up a full (and beautiful) life, even when it looks like howling into the dark or slashing appointments off the calendar to save your sanity.

Here’s a Heidi reflection, I’d love to hear yours as well:

Sept. 2025-present

• began doctoral classes (woot!)

• did not die as a result of aforementioned doctoral classes

• completed research and a model for coaching and mentoring or therapuetic practice with neurodiversity, a strategic plan for our community afterschool program, and completed focus group research on identity and intimacy development in childhood through young adulthood

• read books

• ate better and still gained weight

• traveled and remembered that the world is a pretty great place when America tries my patience

• leaved and cleaved two of my own young adults into their own lives

• had a manuscript on boundaries and grace rejected

• stared at Lake Michigan and let the breeze touch my face

• threw parties and instituted documentary Sundays at my house

Sept. 2026 to a day as yet unknown

• continued doctoral study including comprehensive exams

• beginning writing seminars and research for my dissertation research on topophilia and restorative development theory, or how intimacy with the places in our lives teach us who we are and what supports we need

• eating lots of salad and spending money on the expensive crunchy chickpeas I like

• traveling with my trusty field notes

• playing more mahjong with my sisters and becoming old together as the years pass too quickly

• celebrating and crying with my young adults and teens, in my house, my community, and my therapy practice

• saving money for a hot tub and deciding (again) to use it for education and helping young adults through a crappy economy

• submitting freelance and academic writings on intimacy and topophilia, and maybe a manuscript on spiritual practices of intimacy (including boundaries, play, and place)

• staring at Lake Michigan and letting the breeze touch my face

Can you find the emotions in the above? I didn’t state them, but they are surely there. They demand to be processed just as there are thoughts to be sorted. These will lead to painful and beautiful connections. Intimacy is formed through hope. It is in my need and vulnerability I draw closer to God and we begin to see the layers of one another.

Recently, a therapy client returned my book, Emotions and the Gospel to me and asked: Why did you write this?

I was not offended. She is 86 and a a Baddie with a capital B. She asked me in intimacy to reveal something of myself. Generally, I respect this offering in the therapy room when I can. In return, she suffered through a truly uncomfortable amount of silence as I considered the complexity of my answer:

I wanted people to know that emotions are not a construct limited to their experience. Emotions are and were and have always been. They are pain and they are beauty and in their intensity or their quiet, they connect. They come and they go, weaving us into God and each other and, wildly, to everything around us.

In writing and sharing about emotions, I think I have been able to answer some questions (yay!). I have also come up with more questions. (Maybe, yay! But more: I’m pretty sure, yay.) This is God’s design of revelation rather than offering solutions - questions and answers comingle. And so I will keep talking about emotions in everything I do. As we move back into talking intimacy more in this space, indeed in all the spaces I join others within, we will not leave emotions behind.

I promised in the transition of this academic year into the next, a PDF of all my “extra” emotion content. Many of you have journeyed through my questions with me and so you know sometimes we have found answers, other times only more questions. If this is your jam, please join me! Invite a friend along. It need not be lonely to wonder and pondering and sort. It is better together.

I’m happy to share a free PDF of 50 extra pages of emotion content. If you haven’t read Emotions & the Gospel: Created for Connection, here is a link to the OG questions and answers. It applies in every season, no matter what is on your list. I promise.

Emotions PDF

Emotions & the Gospel

I also began a journey of offering a strong and flexible emotions framework for:

• individuals through therapy practice

• with churches and spiritual communities ready to make cultural shifts in emotional awareness to greater grace and connectivity

• educator professional development workshops for embedded SEL rather than finding burnout trying to add one more thing to the list of to do’s

• consultation for therapy practitioners, coaches, spiritual directors and pastors who want a firmer foundation for working with and sharing the challenge and grace emotions bring to our lives

And with that, we don’t say goodbye to emotions, but we say welcome to widening our lens from emotions into the intimacies crafted and sustained and sometimes disrupted in emotion.

Stay tuned for intimacy articles to come including:

beloved, a study

God’s intimacy with the natural world

intimacy and tension in gender identity

intimacy of the psyche in metaphor practice

the nature of intimacy in community

the intimacy and faults of organized religion

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The Song of Songs will again be our foundation (see Altogether Beautiful, circa 2018), with an expansive lens of research, Scripture, literature, and stories from my voice and others. Articles can be found on Substack and at heidigoehmann.com with bonus content on instagram.

In-person and synchronous events:

Sept 18-20, 2026, MI - Gathering Beauty: A Creative Practice for Hope and Spiritual Renewal, Camp Arcadia

Sept 23-25, 2026, STL, MO - Emotions & the Gospel: Laying a Foundation and Framework for Mental Health Awareness in and from the Church, Concordia Seminary Symposium

Sunday, Sept 27, 2026 - Night of Hope, Auburn, Illinois, with Tanner Olson and Blake Flattley

May your emotions be many, and navigable today and each day before you.

Warmly,

Heidi :)

*pexel image from Ayaan Rahman (thank you!)

Not one of us is born with an instruction manual, re-birth doesn’t have one either. Alone is not how we enter the world. We do not have to do this part alone either.

This big wide world holds oodles of intimidating curves and bends in the road. For some of us, trauma entered and stole. Trauma makes an already confusing life cloudy, heavy, and uncertain. Trauma steals our confidence and weighs down our bodies. Spiritual trauma is unique in that it hits our softest and most vulnerable places. Because spirituality is centered in connectivity, spiritual trauma can eat our community out from under us, or at least our sense of it. Often the very things and people we built attachment relationships with are casualties or causalities of this thing we hold that we never wanted.

Spiritual trauma needs a soft touch, a bit of time, a place to tell our stories; it needs our validation and our rest. The foundation has been cracked and toppled. It takes energy to rebuild. You are not doing it wrong, you just need support and an infusion of hope. You need a bit of wisdom and a map.

I’d be honored to guide you on a path forward I know well. This isn’t the only path through, but it’s a very good trail. I have seen healing on this trail time and again. I know its ruts and the roots that might trip us up.

I don’t know your story, but I’d like to honor it with you and join you on the trek. We can pick wildflowers of hope and I heard this trail has a pretty great sunrise just over the bend.

You’re invited: October 24, noon EST. Find more info and register at http://www.signpostinn.org/events.

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Humans all have different brains and processing styles - there is no neurotypical brain and no one right way of thinking, feeling, or perceiving.

Humans have a variety of brains and processing styles, some may be considered more “neurotypical” and fit what is common to the culture and systems they live in, others brains and nervous systems come with a wide variety of challenges and gifts that may not fit the cultures and systems in which they live and be considered “neurodiverse”

Some humans have a set of symptoms, related to their processing methods, that create disorder in their lives. These symptoms benefit from treatment. We call this definition the medical model.

Any of the above definitions of neurodiversity can be well-intentioned, helpful, and lead to thriving and flourishing. Some (or maybe all) can also be hurtful, unhelpful, or marginalizing for those who live with spicy brains and bodies.

Judy Singer, who coined the term neurodiversity in only 2016, was not the first to see neurodevelopmental variety for its benefit along with its challenges. As stated by Dwyer (2022), “as biodiversity is essential to ecosystem stability, so neurodiversity may be essential for cultural stability.” We need each other to think differently. It bodes well for us to not only have diversity but practice diversity in thinking, acting, feeling, and believing. The question always remains: how do we flourish when the world is wonderful and painful for us all at the same time?

In my own work and life of neurodiversity, I tend to take the dialectical road: at any one time neurodiversity may lean more toward disorder or well-being. We might hold both the challenge and the gifts of neurodiversity in the same hour or the same moment. As with any reality, neurodiversity can be lovely or downright difficult.

None of us are problems to solve. We are people worthy of love and acceptance, help and hope.

And yet, as humans, we have problems. Sometimes our brains and our bodies have problems. This is very different than being “a” problem.

We could spend all day defining neurodiversity. We would need to ask every individual diagnosed with (fill in multiple blanks here) for their opinion. You can find a helpful, non-comprehensive list from the Neurodiversity Alliance here.

Words matter and sometimes they will never complete our puzzles.

As a therapist, I have noticed neurodiverse thinkers usually come to therapy with the weight of the world on their shoulders. Neurodiversity apparently comes with a side of existentialism you can’t shake whether you are 3 or 63. Some neurodiverse individual propel from the womb with 80 million questions before there is language or words for their questions let alone their answers.

Many neurodiverse individuals report processing styles I like to refer to as “brain on fire,” “train off the track,” “rocket ship brain,” “newsprint brain” or “popcorn brain.” Some neurodiverse individuals love metaphors, and others do not think in pictures so metaphors feel confusing and disconnecting.

Some individuals can’t stand to wear socks or tags, others love color and wonder and quiet rooms or noisy music or friends or parallel play or cat reels or wikipedia rabbit holes or laughing or giving someone the what for. Neurodiverse minds are human minds, neurodiverse bodies are human bodies. They will have thoughts, feelings, sensations, dreams, exhaustion, heartache, and healing.

In my doctoral classes, I recently wrote a paper introducing a model for coaching and mentoring for neurodiversity rather than strict “treatment” of symptoms. Because the world of neurodiversity is deep and wide, my model is especially designed for teens and adult professionals who struggle with high self-expectation and performance.

We can’t be good at everything as hard as we may try. Our executive functioning systems all have different strengths and weaknesses. Executive functioning includes the body’s systems that help us manage life, work, relationships, space and time, and more. The coaching within mentoring model gives time for coaching of both our individual strengths and our weaknesses in executive functioning. With time and relationship we can find a place of flourishing in life. Trust is developed and curious learning is exchanged so our nervous systems can begin to pick up the new information rather than push against it. The ultimate goal is for the neurodiverse system to internalize the experience toward self-mentoring. This embedded attachment internally gives a heartier foundation for the future of self-trust and confident navigation skills.

Paid subscribers, find my research paper relaying the model here:

Coaching & Mentoring in Neurodiversity

Eventually, I’d like to offer my neurodiversity model to a wider audience. If you are neurodiverse or love someone who is, stay tuned for coaching and mentoring opportunities to come.

For now, I’ll keep researching. And let me offer this encouragement:

You have a big beautiful brain and a nervous system that is trying to keep you mindful and safe in this world. No matter your gifts and challenges, and they may be wildly diverse, annoying, lovely, weird, and wonderful, it is connecting and listening to our inner world and believing we are loved by God and worthy of love no matter our dynamic or detrimental qualities. We are worth the effort and work to know ourselves more fully, even as we are known. We are each trying our best here and we don’t have to go any of the challenges and victories alone.

Next up:

I’ll be sending out a PDF of all the Emotions & the Gospel bonus content from the last two years: grief, wonder, peace, guilt, hunger, pleasure, and more in one free resource. Subscribe to receive it easily.

Register for in-person presentations on Emotions & the Gospel at Concordia Seminary Symposium in St. Louis, Missouri, or my online Spiritual Trauma webinar at the links below:

Symposium

Spiritual Trauma Webinar

References:

Baumer, N., & Frueh, J. (2021, November 23). What is Neurodiversity?. Harvard Health. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-neurodiversity-202111232645

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 135–168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750

Dwyer, P. (2022). The neurodiversity approach(es): What are they and what do they mean for researchers? Human Development, 66(2), 73–92. https://doi.org/10.1159/000523723

Kapp, S. K. (2026). The Neurodiversity movement vs. the medical model of autism. World Psychiatry, 25(2), 322–323. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.70076

Neurodivergent: What it is, symptoms & types. Cleveland Clinic. (2026, July 7). https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23154-neurodivergent

As we enter the mid-point of summer and turn our eyes in the direction of Autumn (what?!) I realized an update might be in order. Here’ what the upcoming 2026-2027 “season” will look like for writing, resources, events, and connections.

Overall:

Revisiting The Song of Songs - it is no secret that the genre of Biblical Hebrew poetry has my heart for its expansiveness and intricacy. It is full of fodder for writing, thinking, meditating, lamenting, and rejoicing. The Song of Songs especially is one of the most forward books on various kinds of intimacy in Scripture and honestly helps us see all of Scripture, and God, from intimacy rather than aloneness, with multiplicity rather than singularity, which is always healthier for our mental and spiritual health. If you were a fan (or foe!) of my book Altogether Beautiful, I have a hundred more insights to share around the Song of Songs - some new, some expanded, and all of them connecting to God, His Creation, and one another. We will turn our eyes toward our favorite couple since T Swift & Travis Kelce or Tom Holland & Zendaya. I promise you, these guys hold the same amount of intrigue, style, and human penchant for both kindness and messiness. - beginning in September

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The Podcast - On Life in Relationships, Dave and I will also be diving into all things intimacy from romance to friendship to boundaries to sexuality. Send your questions through the comments or through my DMs. You can also email us at lifeinrelationshipspodcast@gmail.com. - late September or early October

The Podcast

Resources to come:

• Emotions PDF - if you have enjoyed my work on emotions, I will be creating a PDF of all my bonus emotions articles and content for subscribers here on Substack which I will send out in late August. If you don’t mind sharing that I exist over here, I would be much obliged. Online life after Facebook has been oddly hard to rebuild. If you are new here, or reading for the first time on this platform, you can get all my articles in your inbox via Substack, just like in the old days of my website email list.

  - late August

Upcoming articles:

• Another dalliance into the realm of The Psyche: Strange but True. Grief Low Self-esteem. Thanks for processing this season of loss with me. Grief is best when it doesn’t feel like a deserted island, even though it is often a work of solitude.

  - early august

• Coaching & Mentoring for Neurodiversity - if you or anyone you love has some neurodiversity inside them, in my doctoral program I have been working on building a method of growing executive functioning skills within a mindful, creative mentor relationship for use in leadership practice, therapy and educational settings, or within ministry and family relationships. My model is especially beneficial for high performing (dare I say over-performing/perfectionist tendency) leaders and creatives as well as their teenage and young adult counterparts. I am opening up my paid subscriber doctoral research releases to everyone, but know that paid subscribing helps me pay for said doctorate. I appreciate any scholarship contribution.

  - late August

Events:

Night of Hope - Tanner and I are meeting tonight to dream up brining hope to more of you in person. We have possible plans for bringing hope to organizations and leaders within them, teachers, and artists of all kinds. We especially always want to meet with and bring hope to young adults and college students as they transition to greater independence and agency and come face-to-face with this wild life. If you are at a college or organization that would like some hope, stave off burnout, or increase wellbeing and creativity to your midst, send an inquiry here.

Night of Hope Inquiry

Cornerstone Lutheran, Carmel, IN, The Anxious Generation & Mental Health - August 9th

Educator Professional Development, Empathy & Resilience, SE MI - August 21

Junk Journals for Spiritual Practice, Camp Arcadia, MI - Sept 18-20

Concordia Seminary Symposium and more, Emotions & the Gospel: A Theological Framework for Mental Health in the Church, St. Louis, MO - Sept. 21-27

I hope to see you soon in-person or online. Please consider sharing my work to help people know I am still here, talking mental health, genuine relationships, and hope.

Warmly,

Heidi :)

I read a book some time ago during a series of drives back and forth, two hours one-way, between the Omaha Eppley Airport and our home in Norfolk, NE.

The book was a curated collection of encouragement toward noticing. I do not know that I thought this book would be a good or necessary read, but something in the Libby app called out to my spirit to consider this as a possible #goodread. It was, for me, in fact a #mediocreread. By the seventh passage about birds, I had my fill.

Feeling and seeing are both the greatest blessing of the creative, as well as our greatest burden. If art was made from noticing alone, we would all be set. But art is made from processing as much it is from noticing. Sometimes, noticing can drown your soul. Disappointment is as present and powerful as beauty. The psychology of creativity exists within the same dualities we live in each day. There is mental work, and a mental load, to being a noticer. As creatives we find ourselves in the (good) work of processing all there is to be noticed daily. As embodied people, it behooves us to notice our bodies bear the load of noticing, even as they continue to bear the heavy burden of their backstory.

Redemption comes through empathy:

God feels for us and with us.

We are not alone in the million good and challenging details of our lives.

Empathy is an antidote for much of life.

I have good news, friends, empathy is also a companion, a schoolmate, and a partner to innovation, creativity, and refreshment as well (Bellis et al., 2023).

We need not be exhausted in empathy, in fact, it can engage our creativity rather than famish it. The difference between empathy that exhausts and empathy that drives creativity includes:

• seeing through each other’s lenses, when we as humans are given to avoiding or arguing another’s lens (both take far more energy than we expect)

• finding bits of sense to feed us when the problem in front of us or the world as a whole doesn’t make sense

• noticing and bandaging our wounds of cognitive pain in confusion rather than experiencing an internal bleed of confusion and ignoring it until we bleed out into burnout

• finding the difference between resonance and reaction

To read more on the link between creativity and empathy through the lens of research, connection, and sense-making, read more at the link below.

Full article

Up next:

*paid subscribers will receive notes on a self-coaching model for engaging with and resolving challenges from one of my recent doctoral papers and later this summer my recent research on relationship, connection, and coaching and mentoring through and in ADHD and other forms of neurodiveristy

*articles to come on the oddity of “grief low self-esteem” and a preview to my upcoming year long series on different aspects of and kinds of intimacy

Upcoming Events:

Finding Hope in Restorative Mental Health: 4 Essential Types of Resilience - August 9th, 2026, Cornerstone Lutheran Church, Carmel, IN

Emotions and the Gospel: Laying a Foundation and Framework for Mental Health Awareness In and From the Church - September 22-23, 2026, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO 36th Annual Theological Symposium

Night of Hope - Sunday, Sept 27, 2026, Auburn, Illinois

Moderator, Lutheran Bible Translators Scripture Literacy Summit - Zoom access anywhere, 10:30am-1pm CST

Subscribe for upcoming articles and resources in your inbox. Thanks for being curious, learning, and sorting the stuff of life along with me.

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Find more resources or request me for an event at heidigoehmann.com.

Life, I am learning is less concrete in it’s seasons then I would prefer. The stages, transitions, and networks of sadness and joy, confusion and clarity all co-mingled more strongly than I would like.

My mom died on March 15th and I have survived it so far, as we all have with our large and small griefs. By the time Star Wars Day rolled around on May 4th, however, my broken record message to myself was, “The angst is strong with this one.”

After sitting with my angst for a moment, and spewing it to two very thoughtful coworkers on Wednesday lunchtime, I acknowledge that one starts to get tired of the stages of grief. We had been on a 12+ year cycle of grief in walking with my mom in dementia and they had already taken up an incredible amount of space in my life. Death I can navigate, but the scribble scrabble of grief’s invasion appeared to have gotten the better of me.

I find myself surprised by grief’s crux: the annoyance of grief’s existence is much harder for some than the work of walking through loss.

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The meta-grief bites at my heels daily. I am sad about grief’s nature. I am angry about grief’s pain. I am in denial of grief’s power. I am in a face-off, not with the absence of my mom, but with grief’s incontrolability.

Grief is a tenacious bastard demanding energy and attention I do not have nor want to spend. I am surprised that in her absence, it is not the affection of my mom I bring forward with me in remembrance of her, but rather the shadow parts we share. It is her discontent, her penchant for unhinged commentary, and her depress-y parts I feel closer to the surface these days. The universe demands the shape of my mom land somewhere and I am the chosen vessel. The torch of turmoil must be carried on genetically.

I plead with God to alight me with the beauty of her compassion, her loving touch, or her general good taste in accessories. Instead, I get “barely grounded” and “easily irritable.”

I journal and I tend and I do the grief things. I see my therapist and I therapy myself. It is in grief’s incontrolability that I find possibility ironically. It is in stumbling upon beauty, I find fresh air.

Enter Heidi’s Lessons in Grief: Stage 3.5

On a recent trip to New York City with a good friend, I nearly tripped over the loveliness of life. And not the loveliness of life from my perspective, but from my mom’s. Somewhere between bargaining and depression lies Grief 3.5: Noticing Every Little Thing They Loved. Noticing love and life again was hard to reach from my own perspective, but I found that deep inside me resided hers.

My mom loved tulips and dachshunds.

She loved carbohydrates and cocktails.

She loved getting dressed up for the theatre and laying too long in bed staring at the wall.

She loved hospitals and rooms that were too hot.

She loved spring colors, and loved them better behind window panes shielding her from allergies and hayfever.

She loved friendship and connection, in their anxious and avoidant forms, not straight on or standardized.

She loved artwork and creativity. She loved color and the ghostly pastels of Impressionism.

She loved me and anything adjacent to me. She loved my achievements in my life, no matter the size - doctoral homework, good dinner reservations, setting a boundary and keeping it, tracking down the bagel of my dreams with vegan cream cheese.

She loved babies swaddled well in their buggies and someone else driving and a scarf only useful for drama.

I began warning my friend, Hope, somewhere around noon on our second day in Manhattan that I could not be held back, there were bits of my mom everywhere. I began announcing again and again, “She would have loved that.”

Thankfully, my friend was here for it. I pray yours are too. Somehow it’s easier to find the loveliness when we can hand it over to someone else. Holding it together perhaps eases the pain of having to hold it without those we have lost. For nearly a week Hope and I explored, we sat quietly, we walked, we ate, we grieved and we remembered the world was beautiful.

In retrospect, I needed Grief Stage 3.5 because Grief Stage 4 was looming. I sat in its sadness and low energy. I would need to abide and tend and hold my sorrow again, but I could do that because I had 3.5. And I will need 3.5 again.

Angst makes sense. It is a partner to grief. There is space for that here too.

But I will daily ask God for a dose of 3.5 too:

“She would have loved that.”

Show me our shared loveliness as much as the depth of her disappointments. Let me be held by the resurrection dawn of all things good, so that I know it still exists when the night settles in again.

What would your loved one have loved, called lovely, or held in joy with you?

________________________________

That’s a good one. She would have loved that. ;)

Scenes from the Upper East Side, which she would have LOVED.

My train car matched my scarf, spring was in full bloom, analog theatrical magic, and birthday Field Notes at the Met.

Topophilia, noun

“Love of, or emotional connection to, a particular place or physical environment.” - Oxford English Dictionary

Topophilia is a term used to describe a deep connection developed between people and a place. Yi-Fu Tuan beautifully curated the language for topophilia in the late 1970s, while indigenous communities across the world have practiced and taught the craft and way of being that is topophilia since human connectivity came into being.

Some researchers study adjacent constructs such as people’s place identity, place attachment, and other words and phrases I have yet to uncover.

I like topophilia best, as I described in a recent graduate paper - “The Greek topos, meaning place or space, meets the Greek philia, denoting friendship or affection, to form a portmanteau intended to highlight the intimacy between humans and their supportive spaces.”

Because I love the nuance and breadth of Hebrew so much I have half a mind to make up my own version of topophilia with Hebrew terms - take rea’, a term for friend or companion, denoting the nourishment of friendship, the shepherding and influence that resides when intimacy grows and knits itself into our hearts, minds, and lives. Then take maon, a dwelling place, often sacred, such as the tabernacle, but also any refuge, protective, set apart. Reamaon - a place God crafts in our lives to hold us in all of life’s tensions and turmoils, joys and juxtapositions.

The places of our lives are more than background scenery. They are connected to and within us. While some places might roll by as green screens, barely noticed, others stick. Environments serve as settings and holders of stories in visual art, oral and written history, family albums, and the conversations of everyday life. What I found in a recent focus group I led for my coursework revealed another layer - The spaces humans engage with serve as intimate companions, birthing and bearing the emotions of a life, increasing our awareness through the senses, and bringing conscious recognition of our perceptions and values, so that we know who we are, who God is, what this life is all about, a little more, a little deeper.

Not all places are equal. Yet, some places in our lives are restorative. They bring us energy and renewal. They remind us there is more to be had than sorrow. They give us room to explore. They allow us to turn down the hyperawareness of our nervous system just enough that we can hash out our identity, our relationships, and the big things of life, like sense and meaning.

These places hold us, rather than expect from us. This is topophilia.

Sometimes these places are spots in our home, sometimes an extension of our selves, such as a friend or a grandparent; the green and blue spaces of nature are high in the running for “most likely to be topophilic.” But I have questions - what if the educational spaces and sacred spaces of our communities gave attention to this concept? What is in fact being destroyed within our young people because guns are shattering our schools? What damage is done when sacred spaces are challenged to find the co-habitation of both grace and accountability?

As an interpretative critical realist, I am leaning into studying topophilia because I love intimacy and I love people’s stories. I love the interweavings and connectivity of life and this big, beautiful world, and I also know the shadows hiding in both our spaces and our inner worlds. I want to make more space for both the beauty and the ashes, both the burnings and still be there for the finding, the sorting, and the hearing of restorations.

Topophilia is a unique slice of the pie of what intimacy is. It allows me to study intimacy closer, without getting lost in the weeds trying to explain to everyone that not all intimacy is sex and sometimes sex doesn’t even begin to touch the real wonders of intimacy. (Although, I am a fan of sex and I wonder if there is a research study just waiting to be written on the interaction between topophilia and good sex. Hmmm.)

Where have you found topophilia in your life? What spaces not only offer safety, but a companionship? These spaces help you discover and explore, establish who you are, and hold the disappointing and glorious fact of life that none of us know quite yet all of who we are or what it all means, and yet we can call this life our own.

There is an incredible amount of agency in topophilia. I believe it might be helpful when choices have been taken away from us. When poverty or imprisonment or bad relationships take from us, topophilia might have some insight for returning our self to us once again.

It is just like God to say, “Here is something weird and random and wildly complex and gentle and sweet and crafted just for you.” God is the Leslie Knope to our Ann Perkins-ness. For some reason, in some way, God calls us glorious land mermaids, and we find ourselves in these generally good and shitty lives of worry and wonder. And we are not left. We are not forsaken. We are companioned and held and we grow.

Topophilia, like so much discovered and yet to be uncovered, is a resource that makes life livable and thriving, rather than only surviving, possible.

Stay tuned for more to come and thanks for joining me on the research journey. Paid subscribers on Substack get to hear a little more by unlocking my recent research paper on topophilia and young adult identity here.

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Do you have questions on intimacy, topophilia, emotions, relationships, life, spirituality, or more? Paid subscribers also can access one 60-minute one-on-one conversation session. Or, submit your questions and ponderings in the comments or via chat and I’ll try to fit them as I can.

Coming soon:

Happy Book Birthday to Altogether Beautiful: A Study of the Song of Songs and Finding Hope: From Brokenness to Restoration. This Fall we’ll return to the Song of Songs for a year of monthly contemplation in this book full of poetry and wisdom on what intimacy is and how it interactions within and ignites who we are as humans. Follow on Substack or Instagram to get the articles as they come out. Otherwise, find them anytime at heidigoehmann.com.

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Connecting In-person or online:

Finding Hope is always in season - use the speaking inquiry form on the connect page of heidigoehmann.com to invite Tanner Olson (author, poet, friend of dogs and humans) and I to curate conversation with you and your community with Night of Hope, our labor of love and connection to bring the conversation of mental health with gentleness and creativity to every corner of the world and keep it going around every table.

I am now booking conferences and events for 2027 and 2028. I’m looking forward to the following upcoming events to round out 2026:

Theological Symposium, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO - September 22-23

Concordia Lutheran High School and various groups, Fort Wayne, IN - October 10-12

I’ll also be close to home in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and a few online spaces over the coming months. I’d love to connect with your group wherever you are.

Until then, see you on instagram or the notes section of substack, or maybe on a random Sunday at a local coffeeshop near you in the wild. ;)

May your places and spaces be full of safety, exploration, and curiosity. With warmth and affection,

Heidi

While the world is full of many good things, each day death makes itself known all around us – things change and with it something usually dies or is lost

hearts break and connections dim

bodies decay and the fabric of our DNA brings disease alongside life and health

landscapes and life choices can feel desolate

nations rage

The work of living can feel heavy. This is one reason therapy exists, pastoral care exists, and honestly a good chunk of why community and friendship exist. We cannot go this place alone.

Yet, there is good news. We need this good news not pounded in to us, but lovingly, kindly, shake-us-to-our-core and hug-us-till-we-feel-safe-again revealed to us. Perhaps because revealed is related to re-deem and re-store and re-make and re-late.

In 2019-2020, a small to medium sized “dark night of the soul” came upon me. I had taken up the task of looking brokenness in the face, and I lacked some semblence of balance as I searched. I possibly looked at brokenness too closely for too long. I let research mode take over and forgot that researchers still need connection to find hope. I knew somewhere in all the brokenness, I needed restoration, personally. I needed restoration in a today way, a practical way, while I waited for that Not Yet kind of restoration of God long term. I started looking for the re’s of Scripture. What I found was life in the midst of death, decay, and decrease. Life did not, does not come instead of brokenness, not instead of pain or, not instead of the heavy things, but life comes alongside. Hope is the reminder that we are and will be:

Remade

Reborn

Restored

Rebuilt

Redeemed

Replanted

Resurrected

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I started to find that grace is not limited to some day or somewhere else with streets of gold, or the eternal no tears red pill matrix. I knew these things already, but slowly walking through them, seeing them in the lives of humankind in Scripture helped me spot them in my neighborhood and my family and my nation and the world and within myself.

I wrote My Redeemer Lives because I needed to know God’s resurrection was working in my life today, every day. And just like brokenness, I started to really acknowledge resurrections and restorations, just like brokenness are best handled together. We can see them more clearly that way. Re-velation is intimately connected to those other re-surrection, re-storation, re-etc, etc.

Ezekiel 36:26-27, 33-36 reveals newness, remaking, rebirth, and resurrection in every through the work of a gentle Spirit. Our compassionate God meets us in our de-s, desolation, destruction, discouragement:

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

³³ “Thus says the Lord God: On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt. ³⁴ And the land that was desolate shall be tilled, instead of being the desolation that it was in the sight of all who passed by. ³⁵ And they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited.’ ³⁶ Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I am the Lord; I have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.

Job spoke assurance and hope, perhaps so his eyes could see the hope today, each day, not only some day, in Job 19:25-27,

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth
²⁶ And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
²⁷ whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!

Remember that just a few verses earlier Job acknowledged the ick, the stuck, the disappointment in Job 19:19-20

¹⁹ All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
²⁰ My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

“Yet” is a key word here. Yet in my flesh, yet in my home, yet in my life, yet in yours, in ours, in this place, in the unknown…yet in this (whatever this is) I shall see God.

With the death of my mom, I returned to this promise. Over the next year I will be editing my original writings around resurrections to create a new printed resource to be released as energy and life will allow it over the coming two years. Look for My Redeemer Lives: A Seven Week Study of Resurrection coming soon-ish.

In the meantime, I invite you to download the Resurrection writing plan below for some pre-study and engagement. I pray this helps you begin to spot resurrections and regrowth in your life in whatever season you find yourself in.

Resurrection Writing Plan

You might also engage in reading one or more articles at heidigoehmann.com about growth and development. Sometimes resurrections come across time, and it helps to look back and forward at our seasons as well to see where they might be easily missed.

Development Resources

I will also continue to write on emotions and the gospel as well as begin a series of additional reflections on identity and intimacy in the Song of Songs beginning Fall 2026, complementing Altogether Beautiful, my original study of the Song of Songs, eight years young this month! Subscribe on Substack to get the upcoming series in your inbox and grab the original here.

Our Redeemer does Live. In the middle of the mess, the resurrections are there as well.

In fact, resurrections, once you see it, you can’t unsee it –

Resurrections are everywhere.

Thanks for reading along. Share your resurrections tiny, small, medium, big, and miraculous in the comments.

Spring unfolds at a snails pace in Northern Michigan.

In March we usually welcome Fake Spring, which turns into Second Winter, leading to Second Spring. Second Spring eventually reveals the Winter of Our Discontent, until the first week of May when Real Spring™ sprouts its buds and the glory of Lime Green Season begins.

It is a prominent lesson in everything in its time.

This year, the turning of Lent to Easter, winter into the fresh new life of spring, feels different. The loss of my mom colors most things, if not everything. I spent holy days next to her bedside. I and the hospice nurses were her watchmen - praying and singing through the day into quiet nights, keeping the struggle of death at bay until we knew Jesus was leaning down to touch her cheek and welcome her home. I took my watchman role Song-of-Songs serious* -

“The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
They beat me, they bruised me;
they took away my cloak,
those watchmen of the walls!
Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—
if you find my beloved,
what will you tell him?
Tell him I am faint with love.” - Song of Songs 5:7-8

Yes, I can find the Song of Songs in anything. It is the Great Love Story of God to each of us, God to His people, God to Creation, and humans among one another. God is faint with love for us. I take comfort in a God who pursues, a God who will find us no matter how far away we feel in our desserts, or how low we feel in our valleys.

My mom had her share of valleys. I wanted to make sure her earthly ending was a practice of intimacy, surrounded by light, love, grace, and Life. It was not all joy, but it was not all lament either. The hospice nurses put sparkles on her nails and brushed her the curls in her hair; my dad kissed her forehead, her cheeks, and her lips; the music therapist had me press my cheek to her face as we sang “I Dreamed a Dream” like we once sang at the top of our voice walking along the River Seine before the developmental cleaving of our lives the year I turned 18.

I will hold her final days close. During a time my mom may not have remembered who I was through the fog of dementia, she knew me through years knit with the needles of intimacy.

There were of course nights I could not sleep. Days I could not eat. Phone calls and texts I could not answer. This is the nature of grief: it demands more attention than we care to give and more energy than we have to impart.

During 3am wake-ups, I wrote poetry in my phone notes - laments and memories to honor my mom and the relationship we had, the moments dementia had stolen from us, and the kindness of God through the struggle and rejoicing of a life fully lived.

I comforted myself with words I have said to me therapy clients hundreds of times, “The other side of fear is love. We fear because we have something to lose, no matter how complicated the stuff of life surrounding it.”

Today I share my laments with a side of joy. I pray they tend to your joys and your losses, your relationships and your intimacies. Help me honor my mom by hugging someone today or sharing kindness, by allowing lament and joy to co-exist, so God’s kindness can pour out from us into others.

Mother’s Unspoken Wisdom

Salt is not the only way to season a dish; 
Spice and season all things liberally and creatively.
Dill weed makes most things more interesting, 
Except for Italian;
Some things should be left to the expertise of others;
Find a good Italian restaurant.
Don’t make life harder than it needs to be.

You can have a giant emotional fit if you need to.
It likely will do nothing, 
And there will be consequences, 
Both relational and physical 
But you are *allowed.* 
You are a human trying to survive the world.
You are *allowed* to be full to the brim with needs;
Survival requires some form of release.

The nighttime is infinitely more interesting than the day. 
Stay up as late as you can;
Suck life like marrow.
It is fatty, and not always tasty, 
but often good in surprising ways.
It takes years to learn the value of night.
Let it take years.

Sleep and rest, dearest.
Let this body rest. 
Invite others along.
If we can’t snore with one another, what doing?
The night will occasionally wear on,
It will betray you with its loneliness. 
Be weary, but respect the quiet. It doesn’t mind your need. 
Midnight doesn’t expect much out of us. 

Hospitality is the act of inviting people into your soul.
It will feel invasive, but you must do it.
We are not made to be islands, although we all try it for a little while. 
We are made to grow chaotically together, a meadow of wildflowers,
The forest undergrowth.
Let the weeds grow. They are only trying to survive as well. 
No reason to pluck something up just for taking up space.

Some days we are Queen Anne’s Lace, 
Others daffodils and zinnias, tulips
Usually not roses, but they are more prickly than necessary anyway.
The sun shines on the soil,
The soil meets the horizon no matter where you are on the planet;
Dandelions somehow have the capacity to become wine.
Look around you when you can.
Notice what might have been forgotten otherwise. 

Just one more thing, darling,
Say nice things.
Don’t be racist. 
It is gouache and not fashionable. 
Like corsets, we don’t need that kind of restriction in our lives.
If we lived the horrors once, let’s not try to live them again. 
People are made for expansion, not contraction.
Be a good human. 
It’s not that hard.
No one needs to make the days harder than they already are. 
Be human.

Out on a limb

Grief sounds surprisingly like Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in D Major 
I am again a baby bird 
I am not on a cliff but rather 
But again
Staring at the ground from a branch above
Wondering at the pressing immediacy 
The anxiety of the day
Crafting images of my tiny body meeting the flat ground below

Can I ask you a question before the push off:
What if I don’t want to find my own worms?

The wholehearted life 

I am limited and I am starting to learn to live with it. 
This is life.
Or as my mother used to say:
Welcome to the distillation of a 
Precious
Magical 
Stubborn
Wholehearted life. 

Thanks for sharing my lament and my joy.

In the words of my mother’s obituary, “Jeanice lived, survived, and cherished 87 years of the ups and downs of a beautiful life.”

My mom and I on aforementioned River Siene walk. She always had a little more zhuzh than I did in the middle of the night. ;)

Much love to you all, whatever your season, friends.

Always with warmth,

:) Heidi

*PS - Follow along for extended Song of Songs content, Fall 2026.

Sometimes the truth ain’t easy to find
I want to know all the answers
But I’m learning that these things take time

- Sanctus Real, “These Things Take Time” -

Life is change. Change takes energy. Energy is limited.

I am here today to convince you that these three disappointing facts, while burdensome at times, are also intricately stitched into the nature of our creative processes. Indeed – is it possible that life’s incessant change is the very flame of creativity? At least let me convince you that life’s changing nature can be a log on the fire of your creativity.

Validating change
We aren’t going to get rid of change. You aren’t doing something wrong when life throws a wrench in things or when one season turns to another. This is the nature of things. Life makes space for the mundane, but in its way and by its nature, moments turn into moments and years into new years. We do not stay in one space.

We do not meet change alone. The benefit of flesh meeting spirit is the power of an unchanging God alive and awake within us. We do not meet the changes and chances of life without mercy also in our reach.

Processing the changes of life is a mechanism of creativity. The noticing is stronger in the upset; the changes reflect back to us a vibrancy we might have missed otherwise. Unfortunately, sometimes that vibrancy is the pain of cuts and losses, other times it is the joy of the accomplishment of the moment, and even these hills must be hiked down, and another climbed.

Yet, change will help us notice. It is in allowing ourselves moments to process – to journal, to craft, to consider, to reflect, to discuss, to rest – in the change, that creativity will flare….

Read the article & tools

Article takeaway highlights:

Navigating change without exhaustion

The process of collecting - creativity through change

Coming soon:

Films of Fodder - my top films of late for relational insights

Welcome Spring - a collection of printable zines for emotional awareness and regulation

Welcome Fall - return to the Song of Songs with me and discover the many and various forms of intimacy in us and all around us

*find the first article in the series on creativity here

While enduring the rigors of research methods, I have been able to refine my research chops around two of my favorite topics - intimacy and the weirdness and wonder of the human psyche.

Over the last two months I have especially been exploring the relationship between intimacy and awkwardness, as well as topophilia, or intimacy with a space or place. I have much to say about both, but thought we’d start with awkwardness.

As paid subscribers, I promised special tidbits of nerdiness revealed in your inbox, and I think the mind map I built around the research we currently have on intimacy and awkwardness fits this bill perfectly. In the map, you’ll find four primary themes within the research and tiers of themes off of those primary ones.

These four themes include:

definition challenges for each term, both awkwardness and intimacy

concepts around communication skills supporting or leading to navigation challenges in awkwardness

special populations to consider related to awkwardness and intimacy

details and themes with perception of self, others, and circumstances in awkwardness

Here’s the mind map, followed by why in the world it matters -

Read more

He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams. He began to say to himself: ‘Perhaps I shall cross the River myself one day.’ To which the other half of his mind always replied: ‘Not yet.’”

~ The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2 ~

I was first introduced to Tolkien’s Middle Earth at the age of 36 with a 9-year-old who fell head over heels with hobbits when he found a hardcover copy of Bilbo’s tale displayed at the entrance to our small library in Ohio. As most early Tolkien readers are prone to ask, whether nine or 36, I too held the question, “Where has this story been all my life?”

Tolkien wasn’t my first introduction to literature or fantasy, but Tolkien’s Middle Earth did bring to me an unrealized awareness that worlds might be built, not only lived in. And this was life-changing for me. I first took solace in worlds built by others –Tolkien, Lewis, Stan Lee, Frank Herbert, George Lucas – looking for nuance and detail on each page, hungry for the reminders that good and evil are universal, challenges and victories will come and go, and it is intimate relationships, friends and family, comradery and partnership, that often reveal God’s hope through it all.

Perhaps more than all those meaningful bits, I wanted to be creativity-adjacent:

I wanted to live in Tolkien’s head and eat the cheeses and apples of Hobbits.

I wanted to drink at the Mos Eisley Cantina and razz a Wookie.

I wanted to harness a sandworm.

Reading Tolkien’s writing gave me permission as a mom of four and graduate student to return to the art of daydreaming, which had been left behind with my childhood. Soon, I (re)discovered the writer and creative within me as well. Other parts of myself I had forgotten or buried in the work of daily living as an adult.

Yet, creativity is something I practice every day. It is all around me…

Read the Full Article

Article takeaway highlights:

Exercises for creativity - daydreaming, Jung’s active imagination, and remembering play

There are many reason to feel guilty in life.

A few I hear often in the therapy room include familial obligations, letting someone down, saying the wrong thing, saying something that doesn’t land the way we intended, eating too much food, setting boundaries, and having human needs, including our mental health.

We are people who have feelings about our feelings (meta-emotion) and thoughts about our thoughts (meta-cognition). Meta-emotion and cognition are related to wonderful and important (while sometimes pesky) executive functioning skills which allow us to evaluate the world and our contexts, including ourselves. Yet, our evaluations, set to keep us safe, can quickly go awry. We judge and feel judged. We feel anxious about our anxiety. We are afraid of our fears. We think too deeply and too harshly about our thoughts and feelings, which may be momentary, confusing, and mostly come unbidden.

Part of the work of being human is the work of aligning ourselves with our values over and over again. We have a thought and determine whether it is believable, reasonable, or helpful given the situation in front of us. We have a feeling and consider where it came from, what it is related to, and whether it needs more attention.

Guilt can be a pinch or a strong emotion begging for attention within us. First, it helps to recognize its strength. We all have a load of emotions each day and not everything can be given attention. It is easy to tax our executive functioning by expecting it to process every miniscule detail of the day and our inner worlds. One way we address executive functioning challenges like organizing ourselves, impulse control, planning, and initiating is by letting some things go. We change our environment or ask for more time for homework. We get honest about deadlines, and we begin to form a relationship with the parts of our brains that want what they want, when they want it so that we can get to know it, clarify what is safe and not safe, and generally guide and teach it in love.

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The interesting thing about guilt is that it is an emotion related to morality. When we feel guilty, we are perceiving a harm, real or imagined, or somewhere in between. Guilt exists between – between you and me, between me and my Dad, between humans and God, between a leader and their followers, between…

Guilt is a perceived relational reality, more than it is an emotion.

We certainly feel it, but when it lasts, when it continues and hangs out like a bad houseguest, then, it is a belief. Our safety brain holds fast to the guilt, even once confessed, laid down, or apologized for tenfold. Our Nervous Systems take the emotion of guilt, the feeling of guilt and hold it in tension somewhere inside our bodies as a reminder that connection can be lost. We moralize ourselves essentially. And the trouble with stuck guilt is that it is an emotion gatherer. Guilt has a surprising activation in our Sympathetic Nervous System, meaning it sets off alarm bells, and then looks around for the fire or at least the slippery banana peel. Our sympathetic nervous systems can begin to pick up more and more negative perspective and uncomfortable emotion within our body in order to prove the alarm wasn’t a fake out. When we hold guilt, we are set internally to note that which is challenging or problematic rather than what is good and joyful, much more easily than when we have laid our burden down.

Given that it is an emotion of morality, guilt, like wonder is an innately spiritual emotion. It pokes at our deepest places perhaps with an unfortunately negative leaning. It asks, “Am I worthy? Am I loved? Does anyone care about me? Is anyone watching over me? Can any of all this brokenness be fixed?”

Guilt needs to hear a basic truth once again:

Everything is redeemable.

Nothing is unforgivable.

You are human and you are learning.

If your mind is stuck on guilt, it likely is because it needs you to release it a little bit within yourself in order for your body and mind to believe you are trustworthy… to you. Our bodies desperately want to know of us: Will you keep me safe? Will you keep us connected? Will you stay true to our values? Will you… let go when you muck it up?

Guilt is one of those emotions I hear from people often, popping up like a spiritual, and deeply personal whack-a-mole. We try to let it go and a voice inside of us says, “Why you dirty rat.”

Again, basic truths serve us well here:

Everything is redeemable.

Nothing is unforgivable.

You are human. You are learning.

Here is how I recommend beginning to respond to yourself, to begin at the “between”, to create a relationship with your own psyche to help your inner world know that you are listening, that you are leaning in, that you are learning each day, and also that you are tired, and you are trying, and you hurt. The practice of tending to the between of guilt – between me and my friend, between God and humankind, between me and anyone – starts with between me, myself, and I. Tending to the deep place that is hurt by our own guilt, the guilt of others, or by this mad, mad world, help to clear the air just a bit, to release just enough that we can believe in also letting go – whether to do the thing that was in our values all along or to set the boundary, to end the inner torment and to let ourselves feel forgiveness.

It’s a tiny trick to let your body and mind identify that we are all on each other’s side here.

Most days, I love being Lutheran because we specialize in saying, “Yep, I’m guilty, but I don’t have to live there.” And yet, because we need the emotional information of guilt to remind us to be good humans, not living in guilt is easier said than done.

Interact with that emotion, friends. Give the part of yourself that holds the guilt a little love, a little affection, and a little parenting. Remind it that being human is pretty hard, or really hard some days, and begin to lay down, let go, and let God tend to the wounds of a life trying your best each and every day.

Everything is redeemable.

Nothing is unforgivable.

You are human. You are learning.

Primary references:

Stewart, C. A., Mitchell, D. G. V., MacDonald, P. A., Pasternak, S. H., Tremblay, P. F., & Finger, E. (2023a). The psychophysiology of guilt in healthy adults. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 23(4), 1192–1209. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01079-3

The Bible ;)

Being American today is the last thing I want to be today.

I often, like many people, consider jumping ship, crossing over land or shore, to find something more fitting, safer, less distressing. I want to separate myself from my national identity as far as the east is from the west. I do not want Greenland. I do not want to flood another indigenous land with my imperialism. I want to gather my classmates in Minneapolis and their precious school children and head north.

Being American today is the last thing I want to be today. But it really isn’t my choice either.

It is my privilege that allows me to dream all this and say all this out loud. I am not forced to hide. I have some means. My grandmother is an Irish immigrant. She could conveniently pave the way for the surrender of my national identity, or at least it’s transformation. But she paved this identity for me for a reason, and I want to think more deeply about that reason and find it, and know her more.

Then, I also remember my aging parents and my young adult children and I consider the cost of leaving. I know leaving is not for me. At least for now. Here is where I belong, at least for now. Occasionally I put on my tinfoil hat, which has become a winter beanie in the cold white north January, and I wonder about my choices. And then I remind myself, I am grateful choices are still mine to make.

Being American today is the last thing I want to be today.

I have been forced to wrestle with national identity, not only in the wake of this last year’s display of power and violence, but also as we prepare to do the most national thing we have ever done in our lives stories - attend the Olympic winter games.

I have told very few people.

I have considered giving up my seat.

I asked my husband return his US flag sweater, because it felt like *a bit much*.

I bought beautiful little pins for us to wear from EqualiteeApparel . A tiny heart reminding us and those around us that “Immigrants Make America Great” and a lovely wreath signaling I am a “Big Fan of Human Dignity.” Not because they are cute, and they are, but because they are necessary. Which is a weird reality.

Being American today is the last thing I want to be today. I struggle with the shame of it all.

How do I stand and cheer for American athletes, especially incredibly capable, resilient marginalized ones, hurting ones, ones that have fought for years to be in this place, without supporting whatever American is and means right now?

With my forced emotional wrestling, I have come upon two reminders -

Reminder One - No one thing gets to determine who we are. American is a piece of my story, not the whole of who I am.

Reminder Two - Our national identity is greater than national politics or national leadership. Leaders come and go. Nations do rise and fall. The piece of my story that is America is complicated and more than any one moment or person.

Perhaps it is my refusal to let Trump take something else from me, from us, including a 20 year dream of cheering on the USA women’s hockey team.

Perhaps it is the words of Anne Lamott in my inbox,

We do this one day at a time—rest is a sacred act. You don't want the evil to overwhelm you. But we keep going. We never give up on Goodness, on Grace batting last.

We confuse evil by looking like who we are, peaceful and decent and ordinary, in sensible shoes. Like public school teachers, and grandparents.

Perhaps it is my children reminding me that tamales and pizza and hot pot and poutine are all a part of our national fabric and these are just as much a part of our narrative, of who we are as the violence in our streets and the slavery we brought to our shores.

My Haitian friends are better at remembering you can have a bad leader and that doesn’t make the nation itself bad. Gross over-generalizations rarely, if ever, serve us well or offer the clarity we need in troubling times.

I do have to hold the painful realities of so much of America’s narrative. I can’t ignore it. And yet, I need to remember daily that I am not America. And America is not Trump or ICE or imperialism. It is our lands of indigenous and immigrant. It is the beautiful, big blue lake out my window. It is the middle schoolers afraid to go to school because of the repetitive sound of gunshots and red alerts. It is midwest hospitality and Californian love for avocados.

We are America. This is America. Our history is America. And I have to believe that we will move past all of this. That we are more than all of this. I remind my clients we survived Andrew Jackson and his blood bath (although not everyone survived and we again find ourselves rubbing against the painful reality injustice creates). Bad leadership comes and goes and the best we can do is stand up to its destruction. Most of us are somewhat helpless, and not entirely helpless.

I also cannot minimize myself to being American. I am Heidi. I research intimacy and relationship. I am bad a math. I practice (mostly) really good therapy. I am impetuous and talk to much. I feel the sound of chips being chewed in my soul. I made four beautiful humans and am somehow successfully launching them into the world even as I cry over my values they didn’t choose to take with them.

I am more than America. You are more than America. Even America is more than its reputation and its mistakes. We are all far more complex than we care for life to be.

Somehow, I will cheer for Team USA and her athletes. I will wrestle with the complexity so that I can show up for her people. I will telepathically transmit signals to said athletes that I know they are also not one thing, they are many. I will celebrate that they are some of the best that America gets to share with the world - their tenacity, their grit, their strength, their uniqueness, their stories, even their privilege or the absence of it in complex ways - we are all America and we are not America at all. I will enjoy the shared humanity the Olympics generally bring. I will rejoice in something that seeks (while incomplete) to gather the globe our leader is so challenged by right now.

I will cheer and believe that Grace bats last.

Warmly,

Heidi

PS - Please join me in sharing kind thoughts and lots of love in the universe today and in America especially. We need more love right now. Let Grace up to bat.

This winter I have been on a quest.

Not for sunlight, not for signs of the Spirit, not for a better world, although all these things would also be true. I have been on a quest for the many and various shades of grey among us.

I recently read an article from NPR’s Life Kit (linked here) citing 2020 research suggesting it’s not outdoor activities that feed our muscles in the winter which keep us healthy, nor hygge for our soul, or all those Omega-3 encrusted sardines for our brains, but perspective that releives the winter blues of seasonal affective symptomology. While the nordic countries have many practices keeping much of their population spritely through the long nights and deep snow, the primary difference appears to be:

but what if it were just a tiny bit magical?

From June-September, we live in paradise on the shores of Lake Michigan. It’s healing waters tend us, the sun glistens softly upon our tanned beach bodies, and our lawn is filled with friends and bonfire long past the sun’s dismissal at 10pm.

October is a bit of magic, the colors of the rainbow playing out in oak, maple, mum, and mushroom, the violet blue of the sky their trusted partner. November brings brown. As Noah Kahan succinctly wrote, “It’s the season of the sticks.” Soon came the pressure headaches from The Lake that Lies Unhappily Dormant from December-March, which brings the rains of April and May, bursting into Lime Green Season and the startling sign each year that we may all Live Again.

Since our move to The Great White North four and a half years ago, I joined the throng of humanity longing for sun and complaining about it’s absence regularly. What fresh hell was this place that saved all it’s sunlight for the three months of tourist season? I started prozac, bought a sunlamp, set up an ice rink in my backyard, contemplated sinus surgery, saved up all year for Spring Break (woohoo!), and nothing quite broke through.

Until…I started looking for grey, not a single grey, but the great variance of grey before me each day of winter.

After reading Leibowitz’s research on nordic perspective, I wasn’t convinced I was the problem, but I was convinced I wasn’t helping the problem. In October, I began easing myself in, speaking softly to myself like a baseball coach sending in the nervous, rookie pitcher - “You can do this. Stay open to possibility. You were made for this moment. Bring all your psychological skills to the mound.”

With a slap of the butt, November arrived and I started to notice the browns. Many, many browns. I picked up soil and dead leaves and picked at bark and gawked at the deer so easily camoflauged exactly when they most need it. I watched the wind whip resilient leaves on the trees and the trees laughing back, “Oh, you think these leaves are dead? Haha. We’ll show you. We are just protecting our cache for the season to come. We are a team, these leaves, this trunk, these stems.”

December slipped in with its joy and it’s illnesses, its fairy lights and its expensive endeavors. And then arrived January. Here we are, where it really matters. I don’t know how this experiment will go, but I do know that I have started to if not see, to seek winter’s beauty.

I have taken a photo most days noting the greys around me. In doing so, I have seen light where I hadn’t seen it before. I have seen variety in the size and shape of the winter snow and so also the size and the shape of the oppressive clouds and their tenacity in tracking me down. Tonight, when I looked out the window to notice the evening close in, I noticed the soft glow of my neighbors landscaping lights, and my husband’s characteristic gentle steps down the driveway to check for junk mail.

In noticing the greys, I think I have started to notice more of nature and humanity’s soft edges, which we certainly could all use more of right now.

Here we are not chasing psychological perfection, nor are we looking for a get-joy- quick scheme for our mental health. Here, we are being curious to the possibility that there is another way to see the world, that we aren’t stuck, that while we are helpless about many things, finding wonder and delight are also viscid acts of rebellion against the downfall of our spirits.

We will not winter perfect here, we may not even winter well, but we will take a step toward wintering in wonder. Join me on my quest. I do think your mental health will thank you, even just a tiny little bit.

As a bonus…poems for Wintering Well

January 
I determined this winter to behold the greys
To let the layers of granite and sapphire 
touch my pores with their magic

I will wonder at the complexity 
of that which seems singular to the human eye

I will learn again,
remember again 
the depth of beauty.

Neighboring warmth
Soft lights along the landscaping
Tropical oranges in a paradoxical snow globe
Shake, 
     shake, 
          shake

One house down and to the left,
The kids built the cutest snowman
River rock buttons
A fresh carrot for a nose
The scarf belongs to my mom, 
they found it on our front porch and texted later to apologize in reverse 
I’d rather the snowman use it 
It would make my mom happy

One more house down, we were gifted a dog
Named Leo Tolstoy 
Well, Leo.
The Tolstoy was added to reflect the new ownership 
He nibbles your toes for no reason and uses a staircase to get into bed,
Thinks he owns the place 
His demands and delights are beyond measurement 

Enoch’s daisies have been deadheaded 
He let the deer in to clean up before the snow settled 
I should check and see if he wants potato soup, maybe sourdough 
Tuesday,
    Wednesday,
         or Thursday
   
Summer greetings and golf cart horns sound in the rearview mirrors of our minds
The Lake roars and settles
The lamps switched on along the landscaping
We are all tucked in for the winter 
A winter’s walk

A winter’s walk
I spotted my lover at the end of the driveway 

It is a frivolous thing to check the mailbox on a Saturday
I knew he had determined his quest to honor the boy inside him who desired nothing more than a walk in snow boots through fluff and flutter

I recommend choosing a lover 
based on their ability to have and to hold 
the tiny ones tucked deep within their soul 

Thanks for reading, commenting, and communicating, sharing and creating. May your winter bring you good mental health and the quiet whisper of the Spirit who loves you. To our neighbors in the Southern Hemisphere, may your summer do the same. Send us some sun. ;)

Warmly,

Heidi :)

*In 2026, I’m offering all paid subscribers a free consultation session for personal, professional, or spiritual development or growth. DM me to schedule your free one-hour session. This is not therapy, but a good chance to connect creatively. Thanks to all my paid subscribers for supporting my doctoral work!

About this time of year, I offer each of my smallest clients the option of making an ornament to honor the emotions that have come and gone in their life over the past year. Like a Apple Music Replay, Spotify Wrapped, or Goodreads Year in Books, it is a good reflection on the ways we know ourselves and what also might be missed within ourselves if we didn’t take a moment of reflection.

You can find a brief (and slightly humorous) instructional video at the end of this post for the ornament. I invite you to a brief review of your emotional life as well, whether in ornament form, or through a journal exercise like mine below. It might take you four minutes or a few days of stops and starts. Take a moment to honor how complex you truly are.

A Year in Feelings & Photos

January - awe, vulnerable, decisive, nostalgic

February - grief, guilty, cozy, connected

March - inspired, silly, proud, worried

April - frustrated, determined, loved, spontaneous

May - content, outdoorsy, happy, confident

June - fun, vivacious, wanted, affectionate

July -energetic, exhausted, hopeful, renewed

August - capable, relaxed, interested, sad

September - excited, curious, hurt, concerned

October - connected, creative, weirded-out, fortunate

November - contemplative, comfortable, in-between, mifed

December - joy, grief, weary, wonder

God has given us a vast array of senses and feelings to take in this big, wide world around us. Emotions help us be in relationships that build and grow us. They also help us process the pain and challenge intrinsic to being a human in a broken and constantly, imperfectly restorative world.

Here’s to the complications of this year. May our next be complex, and also clear, wrapped in the hope and love we were made for, strengthening us each day and into the next.

Much love,

Heidi :)

PS - paid subscribers will receive one hour of consultation in the coming year; I love helping people clarify their life vision or their work. It’s not therapy, but it is a tiny bit of connection to bring creativity and a little personal growth and understanding into your life. Thanks for cheering me on in my doctoral journey!

Recently, in taking a doctoral level ethics class, I vacillated between wanting to poke my eyeballs out with a fork and being near giddy with all I was discovering.

Maybe this is just doctoral work? It might be. I’m pretty sure it is.

Maybe this is just midlife? It might be. I’m pretty sure it is.

Maybe this is being human? It might be. I’m pretty sure i…

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An Advent Haiku
Advent’s arrival
Reminders of the child
We always have been


Toddler Christmas
What is this land of enchantment and overstimulation?
A cozy afternoon snuggle
Legos and snowballs
Pictures with an old guy who lives with reindeer
An oversized pair of sunglasses and Mardi Gras beads
What are we celebrating again?
Bring on the funk. I can take it. 

Birthdays are always the best parties.
Colored lights
Glow bracelets for hype 
A jazz quintet
Charlie Brown Christmas 
Is this beer ot rootbeer?
Hit me with another juice box

Sensory overload remains the same
Age 2, 42, 72 
The sliver of differentiation slight
The great unknown of crowds
And joy
Too much sugar and affection
Who are these people anyway?
I’m just going to lay down here in the corner for a minute.

Christmas tree
I don’t know if the Christmas tree
needs to take up so much space
But since I like you taking up space
so will all six feet of that tree

Ordinary Time
In the great, grand narrrative of God, 
Stretching out before us
Beginning with 
candlelight and gingerbread
while the snow falls softly and weighs down the trees

This season will turn 
to a place where all seems dark and cold
A little lost,
Left behind
But not forgotten

Then Spring will burst forth
Fresh, new, and muddy
Life will return to our soil and our trees
Our lungs will remember how to breath
We all, once dead, will rise again

Ordinary time is that time in the middle
Where life settles in layers,
Weaving a safety net
Cycles will go unnoticed
A liturgy of the boring 
Endless green will blanket us

Washing dishes and putting away shoes 
to take them out again 
Oceans meeting land and beginning again
Like they always have, since you separate the waters
Hearts beat as they always have, since you breathed breath and life
And the year will wrap around itself again
To this beginning
Where candlelight and gingerbread lead to rebirth

In this beginning,
Let me remember
Clear and bright,
Your love
Holding the universe together
and the gift of the background, 
A liturgy of the boring

Happy Advent, dear readers. Please share any tidbits with friends and strangers.

May your days be soft and bright.

It is time for me to wax on again about my deep and enduring love for Taco Bell.

Is it because Taco Bell saw me through my own rough stretches of teen development? Yes. Is it because Taco Bell supplied the pennies that built the house of Heidi’s educational fund for years to come through my steady teen paycheck? Yes. Is it the intersection of Taco Bell with the life of an average American Midwestern teen, finding refuge in drive-thru bean burritos after late night smoking sessions filled to the brim with philosophical glory and nonsense? Yes again.

Is it also because crunchy tacos are incredibly satisfying, even as imposters? Also yes.

You know what? You can likely almost universally sit at a Taco Bell and do homework, talk with your friends, be mildly obnoxious, and the sense of non-judgment and general chill will continue to prevade the atmosphere.

Hence, why Taco Bell has returned to us once again as the appointed location of Youth Adventure Lunch.

What is Youth Adventure Lunch? Thanks for asking.

Youth Adventure Lunch: a no frills approach to ministry and life, loving the teens and young adults God has put in front of us.

We gather youth. We eat. We talk spiritual things and family things and life things. We study the Bible and how God has interacted in the spiritual things, family things, and life things in the past. We pray. We act goofy. We chat up Dale, another Taco Bell regular and Ludington purveyor of a million good stories.

Youth Adventure Lunch started way back in Ohio in 2008ish (because Andrew hadn’t eaten at a random local cafe) and because graduate school demanded I minimize my schedule. Since then various iterations of Youth Adventure Lunch have spurned and died and reincarnated.

You can read more about Youth Adventure Lunch in an article I wrote about small churches, ministry, and the vulnerability of letting people in at this link from YouthESource: Youth Adventure Lunch

But you know, as I contemplate the endurance and wisdom of Youth Adventure Lunch, I can identify three things that make it work and make it fit Life in Relationship (without losing your soul):

I can make it happen.

I am not planning games. I am not wowing anyone with my clean home or expensive spaces. I am not raising funds and driving all over Kingdom Come.

I am showing up.

We are basically Super Grover at this point in our life and ministry. Our super power is showing up. This is what we’ve got and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that God calls it good. There are no jazz hands here, but there are open hands and open hearts. (For a theology of an open heart see Corinthians 6:11.)

It is not exhausting.

Return to item one - making it happen, showing up.

Dear God, what if ministry wasn’t always Elijah in the desert asking to die and angels needing to feed us? Life in relationship is the Feast of Booths and consists of people and food and joy. Not only suffering, people, but joy. Imagine.

It’s enjoyable.

There is pleasure and enjoyment in many things and often it feels far too far away. In Christianity or religion as a whole we tend to push against pleasure. Isn’t service better, more holy? I have yet to find any Bible passage or research study that truly supports a hierarchy of emotions or experience. The overarching theme is fullness of emotions and experiences. Openness to them all and the universality of suffering and challenges in life. That doesn’t mean I need to go seek and find them to make myself holy. Jesus does that, Jesus did that. There will be enough heartwrenching parts to life. These too are undeniably part of the beauty of relationship. But we find relational rhythm outside of the suffering and heartwrenching bits and in the day-to-day. The rhythms serve as the glue that hold relationships together across time. Some of the deep, meaningful, beautiful, soul stirring parts will actually take place at Taco Bell when you think you signed up for tacos and chill. But most of the time there will be conversation, and smiles, and shared moments and these will build the next moments. It’s ok to enjoy it. As appropriate, take the pleasure and joy where you can.

Youth are miraculous little creatures full of insight and wonder and angst. Feed them, love them, walk with them. Ministry or no ministry, therapy or no therapy. Love them well in whatever way you can. And the good news is, you can have life in relationship with them without losing your own soul or plowing through your bandwidth in the process.

I always have and always will love the youth God puts in front of me. Likely because it was so hard for me to love myself as a youth. There were people who loved me through it until I could do it for myself. Many of them, also over mildly imposter tacos and cinnamon twists.

I want to bring others that.

I want to bring them through.

One taco or chicken quesadilla at a time.

Full article:

https://www.youthesource.com/2025/06/youth-adventure-lunch-a-tale-of-small-church-ministry-stops-and-starts/

Photo credit:

https://www.pexels.com/@mike-norris-2149008874/

My ethics class has left me a bit rended over the last few weeks.

It is one thing to study ethics, another to navigate ethical dilemmas each day at work and then come home to write papers on them. My cup is overflowing with learning, not only about ethics, leadership, intimacy, neuroscience, and more. It is also overflowing with the internal rooting that comes from wrestling directly with the dark and light sides of being human.

What is an advanced degree for if not for learning about ourselves as well as the world around us. Someone wise once said “knowledge puffs up, love builds up.” (God, it was God: 1 Corinthians 8:1)

The rooting and the rending of love for ourselves and our neighbor isn’t always in big, wild seasons of turmoil. Often, there are days or weeks, that stick out as “bad” (a word I have used to describe my last week), that really are more heavy or challenging than bad. There are still other days or weeks, better described as mediocre, which leave us wondering about purpose and fulfillment, sometimes tired in their monotony and disinterest. These too are rooting times. Valuable. Better without the force and violence of rending. Our identity is pieced out and then put back together, the emotional whiplash of a life being lived, the work and risk of being human.

The thing about ethics, or any ponderings connected to the great risks and faultiness of being human includes the risk of a) hurting others and b) being wrong, both of which we will do.

And so I dove into one way I think humans hurt each other by claiming intimacy that is not there: appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is when we take or adopt practices of another culture as our own, particularly without acknowledging or attributing them as not our own. There is a lot of arguing on the interwebs as to what is and is not appropriation as well as who and how can something or someone be appropriated.

Appropriation brings together the risk of words, of actions, of affection, and of disagreement. Appropriation conversations make us feel vulnerable, because appropriation is so easy to do.

I appreciated the work of Thi Nguyen and Strohl (2019) who suggest the following in learning more about appropriation (and avoiding it):

• appropriation is a problem because it is a breech of intimacy boundaries

• only an individual who is intimate with a cultural, has a relationship with that culture, and the group related, can be the determiner then of what appropriation is and is not

• when other’s cry out about appropriation on behalf of a culture or group, yet they are not part of that culture or group, this is called “arrogance of voice,” it is ironically another form of appropriation

• oppression might be present and a good indicator that an individual or group is vulnerable to appropriation, but oppression doesn’t have to be present for appropriation to occur because false intimacy doesn’t always lead to oppressive circumstances

The intimacy argument allows us to step back and ask ourselves a real and valuable question we might apply to many situations: have I been invited to partake.

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