Last August I traveled to Scotland to overdose on bagpipes (at the World Pipe Band Championships and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and the) and accomplish a number of missions on behalf of my novel.

Toward the end of the story, Lichen, the protagonist, communes with his ancestor, Alasdair Crotach, while lying facedown in a hollow in the cemetery serving the Abbey Church, on the Isle of Iona, in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. The scene occurs at night. So I’d planned to stay up late, my one night on the island, and visit the graveyard in the dark.

Alas, when I arrived on Iona, on a Sunday afternoon, I was sorely underslept. I’d stayed the previous night in a hostel in Oban, which might have been fine, except that I hadn’t arrived early enough to claim a bottom bunk. Shortly after climbing into bed, I started feeling one tremor after another—resulting, I realized, from my bunkmate’s every move. Desperate for rest, I pulled my pillow and comforter down from the bunk and stretched out on the carpet by the bathroom door. That worked till about 4 A.M., when the floor started to shake, with the footsteps of the first of my roommates to wake.

No way was I staying up late on Sunday night. Instead, I walked to the graveyard to reconnoiter (find a hollow, lie in it, take pictures); hiked out to St. Columba’s Bay (the setting for a different scene); then returned to my Airbnb to have a snack and go to bed. Turning in long before dark, I assured myself that I did not need to wake before dawn to return to the graveyard. What I’d learned from my daytime visit would more than suffice.

My soul had other plans. Around 3 A.M. on Monday, it delivered the following dream:

I’m talking with Lyndon (Lichen’s real-life counterpart) and another man (possibly my oldest brother). I’m telling the two of them that my job is to learn to relate to people who’ve killed—to bridge the gulf between us. I know Lyndon knows I’m referring to him, but doesn’t let on. Looking me in the eye, he asks, “Did you succeed?” “Yes,” I answer.

In the dream, I urged myself to wake up and record it. This I did. Then I got dressed and headed out in the pitch dark to the hollow in the graveyard—and find out how it felt to lie in it at night.

In Journey of Souls, Michael Newton says that each human, after completing a life, goes before a council of elders to review how it went, i.e., how well the soul did at accomplishing the mission it chose before incarnating. Reading this, I wondered what my council might ask me about, when the time comes—what I’m mainly meant to wrestle with, while living in this body.

My best guess is that it has to do with composting.

I didn’t ask for the task of composting Zendik. Nor did I ask for the task of composting Lyndon. Both came to me, unbidden. And I’m just now seeing they have something in common—relating to the gulf mentioned in the dream I had on Iona.

People enter cults. If you’ve never entered a cult yourself, you might dismiss those who have as stupid. Gullible. Worthless. Cast them out of the ring of human understanding. The same goes for killers—it’s all too easy to dismiss them as evil. Disposable. Beneath contempt. And this doesn’t not make sense, especially when the killer has taken someone you care about, and you want them to pay. But both stances rely on a fallacy: that you stand entirely apart from these others. That you would never, ever do what they have done.

I know what it’s like to enter a cult; I charted this journey, in detail, in Mating in Captivity, my Zendik memoir. I don’t know what it’s like to kill. To turn yourself into a human who can do that. I cannot chart that journey from the inside. But I have caught glimpses of it, through my relationship with Lyndon. And I’ve done my best to trace the path from warm heart to cold blood. To try to understand.

After Lyndon killed and died, plenty of people chose to hate him. I’m guessing their hatred came easy. I doubt they had to work at it.

To me it did not come easy. Yes, I got angry. But hatred simply didn’t arise. And—especially since that beat had been thoroughly covered—I saw no reason to conjure it up. Instead I chose to do my soul work, and set about bridging the gulf.

For a time after Lyndon’s killings and death, I listened to every true crime podcast episode that came out about him. Often, I argued (in my head, in my notebook) with the hosts. Most didn’t fact check, and fell back on caricatures. Some plain old made shit up. Others played telephone, repeating false info conveyed by other podcasters and making it falser. Hardly anyone seemed to be asking—honestly, and with curiosity—how Lyndon had become what he’d become. Even though, it seems, this is precisely what you’d want to ask, if your aim were prevention. Understanding. Reckoning. Collective self-reflection. Lessening the chance that that horrors like his will happen again.

What is the aim, then? To jam the killer into a pillory and stone them to death, so you can reinforce your own sense of belonging to the crowd of the righteous? To shit on the killer’s existence, even as you exploit, for profit, what they’ve done?

You can’t have true crime without criminals. If you listen to the story, and love it, you’re part of it, whether you admit it or not. My Job, as far as I can tell, is to dive deep into the murky, creepy-crawly jungle of that tangle; come up reeking and muddy; then dive back in, again and again.

Hello fellowbeings,

I just received the super exciting news that you can now watch SURVIVING ZENDIK FARM online, for free. No subscription required. To watch, go here.

Then come back to this post and tell me about your experience. I would love to know what the film sparks for you.

I never planned to write a novel. Or even thought I could.

In 2018, after publishing Mating in Captivity, I figured I’d wait a couple years and start another memoir—about marriage, perhaps. Or some other big adventure, yet to be had. Plus, I doubted I had the quality or amount of imagination required to build a world and sustain it for the length of a book.

Yes, in my memoir I’d used fiction-adjacent techniques to craft a compelling story out of a munro of raw material—but I’d had the bones of real life to fall back on: I’d already lived through the inciting incident, complications leading to a turning point, crisis, climax, and resolution.

I couldn’t imagine having to make all that up.

As of early 2019, I’d written just one short story in the past twenty years. It dated back to late 2000, when I’d been desperate to kill a romantic relationship that I believed would otherwise destroy my chances of remaining a Zendik.

Members of the Family, or inner circle, had told me that I either needed to ditch my boyfriend—with whom I’d supposedly created a “bubble” that was fucking with the revolution—or leave the Farm. I still loved him, and didn’t want to cast him off (though I was aware of troubling dynamics within our relationship and, in retrospect, do not think it would or should have lasted). But I knew that if I left Zendik I’d die in soul, if not in body. So I pulled out the big gun—my verbal creativity—and wrote a tragedy starring a husband and wife named Owen and Thelma.

The two of them live in a remote Appalachian holler with their baby, Nathaniel. Thelma, dispirited and lonely, wants Owen to stick around and help her out at home, but he can’t resist the call he feels to wander the hills and preach, for weeks at a time. During one of his absences, Thelma kills Nathaniel by accident. Then, when Owen comes home, she kills him to keep him from learning what’s happened. Finally, she kills herself.

I wrote this story in a notebook, as a spell, or a curse. And it worked: I did manage to convince myself that sticking with my boyfriend, much less trying to make a life with him in the Deathculture, would end in carnage. I cut him off, cauterized the wound, and went on to enjoy four more years of righteous suffering, at the Farm.

In the next eighteen years, I kept the story buried, showing it to one or two others, at most. And then, in February 2019, I sent it to Lyndon.

Why? I thought he would like it. And get it. It was the darkest thing I’d ever written, and he was the darkest friend I’d ever had. But maybe, also, without knowing it, I was wanting to show him that fictional carnage could serve its purpose without becoming real.

He loved the story—and urged me to “write a novel of our people” (the Scots).

I took the idea in, and considered it. At first it seemed implausible—What? Me? Write a novel? But deep in the doubt cave lurked a spark of excitement. And so, one morning, I opened a fresh notebook and started to write.

For the next nine months, I wandered around in that notebook—sometimes daring to depart from what I knew and render characters I’d actually made up, often writing in the third person about a protagonist suspiciously like myself. In most of my scenes, nothing much happened. But I was stretching toward something new.

And then, in October 2019, I had a dispute with the company I worked for—and decided it to turn it into an inciting incident, spurring my protagonist (still very much resembling myself) to set out on a quest for justice. After nine months of tracking, I’d finally scented a plot.

Shortly after that, Lyndon disappeared from my life: I last spoke to him on the phone in January 2020, last communicated with him (via Twitter DM) in April, saw his Cicada 3309 good-bye Tweet in June. Over the next couple years, I did occasionally call and leave a voicemail, but he never replied.

Once I realized he truly had vanished, I got mad, in part because we’d never met in person, and now, it seemed, we never would. In fiction, I composted that anger—and gave my protagonist (Gale) a brother (Lichen) based on him, so we could at least meet face to face on the page.

I also explored the role of revenge in my own life—by checking out what this character based on me might be capable of, when pushed to the limit, as Lyndon claimed he’d been.

Always, I sought to understand him, rather than open distance between us. I didn’t find him evil or anomalous. I saw him as a human, with a sorely broken heart.

After Lyndon killed and died, in December 2021, the story changed again—I started using it to compost his murders and death, as well as my grief that indeed I would never, ever meet him, at least in human form.

I also used the story to ask: How could Lyndon, exactly as he was, have impressed his fury and heartbreak into service of the whole? What would his ancestors have made of his turmoil, and his choices? Would they have lionized him, or cast him out? If he’d lived five hundred years ago, in the clanlands of Scotland, how would he have fared?

Late last year, I sent draft three to my editor. This draft granted point of view privileges to Granville Cabot (the Republicrat candidate for President) as well as Orville (his son) and Mary (his wife). It included about eight different themes—and featured Gale (the character based on me) as protagonist.

When my editor asked me what in the story mattered most, I named the relationship between Gale and Lichen. She advised me to center that, and ditch whatever didn’t support it. She also advised me to consider replacing Gale with Lichen, as protagonist. He was driving the story, not her.

I resisted. I wanted to keep all my precious storylines, some of which contained good jokes! In particular, I wanted to keep Gale (my surrogate self) in the driver’s seat. This was my story, goddammit! Conversing with Lyndon in my novel notebook, I insisted that Gale was not going to surrender the story’s wheel to Lichen.

Slowly, though, I came around. I realized that I enjoyed the chapters featuring Gale and Lichen more than those focused on the Cabots—who, with the exception of Granville, had never fully become real to me. I could indeed cut those chapters—as well as the threads that frayed partway through the story, without fully working themselves into the weave.

I could also remove Gale from the driver’s seat. She’d needed to drive so long as I was using the story primarily to compost the choices I’d made in my relationship with Lyndon. That process wasn’t complete—but it was complete enough that I could shift from writing for myself to writing for the reader. Crafting a page-turner. I’d reached that point on my memoir journey too. So I recognized it, and knew what to do.

One thing that was going to help turn Miracle Cave into a page-turner was making Lichen the protagonist. So I did.

In the current draft, I’ve revised three of thirteen chapters, and am heading toward number four. I intend to revise the rest by the end of this year (or, latest, the middle of the next one). Then, I expect, I’ll need to revise it some more. (You just finished a novel revision? Congratulations! What have you won? That’s right—the chance to revise it again!) And I’m steadily closing in on the day when this novel I once thought I couldn’t write will finally emerge from the cave.

Dear human,

There’s a movie coming out about Zendik, and the Zendik diaspora. It’s called Surviving Zendik Farm. So far, it’s been shown only at Film Frenzy, a festival in Chicago (as far as I know). It’s not in wide release, and I don’t know when it will be. I did have the chance to view an almost final version, on my laptop, in the comfort of my home.

I’m in the movie. It’s a documentary. The filmmakers didn’t make shit up. They certainly didn’t fabricate scenes starring my character. Yet I was shocked by what I saw.

I first encountered the filmmakers—Dan Greenstone & Travis Chandler—in December 2022, when they interviewed me and some friends of mine at my friends’ home in the Chicago suburbs. By then, about a year had passed since Lyndon McLeod, also an ex-Zendik, had killed five people and been shot to death by a police officer, in Denver.

Dan asked us about him. In particular, he asked whether Lyndon had killed because of his time at Zendik; in the film, he and Travis juxtapose my friend’s and my answer—no, definitely not—with a clip of Wulf, Zendik’s founder and long-time leader, asserting that his followers would indeed have killed for the cause.

Watching that bit, I wanted to add nuance: No, Lyndon didn’t do what he did because he’d lived at Zendik. More than twenty-two years passed between his departure from the Farm and his 2021 murder spree. A lot happened in that time that fed his desire to kill. However, he did tell me that, at Zendik, he quit pretending to be a nice guy. Got in touch with his capacity for honesty, and violence. Felt the pain of finding a tribe and committing for life—only to find, upon being excised, that the commitment had never had more than one side.

No, Zendik didn’t turn him into a murderer. But it’s possible that if he’d never found Zendik he never would have killed. I’m guessing that the visceral bite of life at Zendik—the sharp “truths,” the bared claws—gave him a shove in that direction.

For some, Zendik was a life, a vocation, a cause. They spent years there. Decades, even. Remained faithful even after they’d left. For others, it served as a catalyst: they showed up, dove into the Zendik cauldron, and emerged transformed. This dip didn’t have to last long—Lyndon’s lasted just eleven months—to leave a lasting mark.

For all of us, Zendik was a loom. It wove together hundreds of humans who never would have met, without it—then fell away, once the weave was done.

The next time I met the filmmakers, it was July 2023, and I was visiting Earthaven (where I now live). I was in a liminal state, vis a vis Lyndon’s crimes, and my relationship with him. I’d just begun admitting to people that he’d told me three years before killing that he meant to kill. And I’d just begun acknowledging that—in my words then—I’d been “obsessed.”

That is, I was judging myself—saying I’d fucked up, bad, while playing the stupid schoolgirl with a dumb and dangerous crush. At the same time, I was receiving blowback for not having erased from the Internet all trace of my association with Lyndon; the director of a local open mic I’d read at in the past had cited these traces (among other trespasses) as a reason to bar me from reading again.

I was trying to tell the whole truth with love. And it was hard. I was struggling.

The irony is that I was not a recent convert. I’d actually told the whole truth—as much of it as I had access to, at the time—about fifteen minutes after learning of Lyndon’s death, and crimes.

I sort of got the news from a reporter. The day before he’d killed and died, I’d reissued the first part of a podcast interview he’d sat for a couple years earlier, under his pen name, Roman McClay. The reporter didn’t mention the murders in her email—she just said she wanted to talk to me about Roman McClay.

Did I guess immediately why she wanted to talk to me? I don’t think so. I think that before I had time to form a guess, I googled the name, and found the news. Then I called her. And told her that he’d told me, in January 2019, that he was serious about following through on the killings depicted in Sanction, his book.

She was recording the conversation. Toward the end, she said she was going to erase the recording—or at least the part of it in which I’d admitted to foreknowledge of his explicit desire to kill—because she liked me, and didn’t want me to get in trouble. An hour or so later, I told the whole truth again, to a friend who I knew would keep it to herself. And then, for a year and a half, infected with the reporter’s fear on my behalf, I kept my guilty secret.

I started getting free of the secret by asking someone I trust, who works in law enforcement, whether I could actually face criminal prosecution for not having broadcast Lyndon’s intentions. He assured me that I couldn’t. Also, since talking with that first reporter, I’d learned more about the warnings others had issued, to no avail.

I’d also learned that the one potential victim I would have reached out to personally about the danger he was in, had I chosen that course, had already known that Lyndon was out to get him. If he’d had additional evidence of that, what would he have done? Lived in fear for three years? Lyndon did end up attacking him and his family, but not killing or wounding them (except, of course, in the psyche, where I expect they carry heavy wounds, and always will).

The next hurdle was my fear that people I loved would reject me if they knew that I’d known. I hadn’t feared the reporter would reject me; I also didn’t know her. And I’d felt a trace of “Uh oh—did I really just say that?” as I spoke. I cleared this hurdle by jumping it. Over and over. With each leap, it got easier. No one rejected me. And I realized that I hadn’t actually feared they would reject me—I’d feared that I would reject myself.

In July 2023, the filmmakers asked me about Lyndon again. I told them the truth—my version of it, at the time. They captured it on film, with my permission. They conducted a follow-up interview, complete with documents for me to respond to. I treasured all of it. I’d been thirsting for opportunities to compost this material with truly kind and curious people who were more interested in understanding my experience than judging it as bad and casting it aside.

I didn’t think any of it would make the final cut.

Zendik lasted forty-fours years: it was founded in 1969 and folded in 2013. In that time, we Zendiks produced countless hours of video, at least a dozen music albums, and reams and reams of writing. While the documentary was in process, Fawn, the founders’ daughter, donated boxes and boxes of this archival material to the Hamilton College Library—and granted the filmmakers permission to use it in their film. Plus, the filmmakers interviewed at least a couple dozen former Zendiks, amassing dozens of hours of footage.

The final version of the movie runs less than ninety minutes.

As I cued up the recording, one evening in March, I found myself wondering whether it touched on the story of Lyndon. I expected it didn’t—and hoped it did.

Why? Because I value the chance to witness how humans respond to the news that someone they’ve known, and felt close to, has died a murderer five times over. Because if we’re going to compost Zendik, we might as well compost all of it. Because we win, we grow, we live when we choose to reveal that which we would rather obscure. Because the story is itchy and rough and raw and bewildering and has been beating inside my heart for years.

Needless to say, said heart started racing when, about halfway through the film, I heard the name “Lyndon.” I watched a number of ex-Zendiks offer their reactions to his murders, as well as their memories of him, at the Farm and after. I watched myself explain why he’d threatened to kill one of my ex-Zendik friends, and agree with my other friend that Zendik had not made him a killer.

And then I watched myself confess, from the front seat of a car plying the back roads between Earthaven and the crumbling remains of Zendik’s North Carolina location, that I’d known Lyndon had planned to kill, and remained in contact with him even after I’d learned this, because I was obsessed.

This was not the whole story. Still isn’t. I had other reasons for not rejecting him: I believed that the only chance I had of nudging him down another path was continuing to love him, and stay in touch—just as my mother had done, when I’d been smitten with Zendik, and she’d had no hope of reversing the smiting. Also, I knew that his desire to kill equaled his desire to die, and I refused to break another thread binding him to life.

Watching the ensuing scenes, I grew increasingly alarmed. In one, Dan shows me an excerpt, published online, from an email Lyndon had written me in late 2018. In this message, he’d said, “I think killing my enemies (not you ok? Relax) gives them the chance to repent for their sins. It’s a gift.” Dan asks what I’d been thinking. Why I’d stayed in touch. Once again, I invoke obsession. Admit I hadn’t been thinking critically. “I don’t have a good answer,” I say, with tears trickling down my cheeks.

Listening to myself, I felt mortified. Embarrassed. But then, a day or so later, I realized that having said, “I don’t have a good answer” was no cause for chagrin. In fact, it was the best answer I could have given—because it was true. I didn’t have a good answer. Not yet.

A couple months after watching the film, I participated in a Native American Church ceremony—and asked the medicine tons of questions, as I always do.

During other ceremonies, I’d asked the medicine specifically about Lyndon; this time I didn’t. Yet I did receive messages regarding him, including an answer to the question of why I hadn’t cut him off, back in 2018: If I had, I wouldn’t have gotten to know him—and love him—as well as I did, hence would not have been able to compost his legacy, or my relationship with him, as well as I have. I needed to entangle myself with him, to that degree, to do a Job my soul had chosen.

If you’ve read anything by Michael Newton, you know about soul groups, as well as the agreements souls make, between lives, to help each other grow, and learn, in their next incarnations.

This could all be hooey; it could be real; it could be both at the same time.

In any case—fuck the judgment inherent in the word “obsessed.” I chose to stick with Lyndon as long as I did because my soul had agreed to do so. To get close enough to grasp his beating heart, and what was in it—the love, the hate, the pain. And compost the hell out of it, after he was gone.

To view the trailer for Surviving Zendik Farm, go here.

Update (11 July 2026): Watch the entire movie here.

Dear human,

If you’ve been following along since the beginning, you know that back in late 2023 and early 2024 I was having a terrible time with my husband (code name Geranium).

On Leap Day 2024 I left our home in Beacon, New York for the village of Earthaven, in Black Mountain, North Carolina. I planned to stay for a jubilee year, during which Geranium and I would suspend both duty and assumption. At the end of that year, we would reconvene and choose either DIY divorce or Marriage 2.0.

We agreed that no matter what, we could not continue as we were. Something had to change.

A year later, in early March 2025, Geranium and I did indeed reconvene, in Asheville, for a long weekend. Walking miles and miles along the ravaged French Broad River trail, and the city’s streets, we decided to stay married. Drinking pirate mead out of an unlabeled bottle concealed in an organic cotton bag, in the late afternoon sun on a park bench, I tearfully told him, “You’re my person. I don’t know why. You just are. Even if it doesn’t make sense.”

I chose to stay at Earthaven; he chose to stay in Beacon, and continue running his business in Manhattan. I proposed that it might take us a couple years to wrangle our next iteration of living together; in the meantime, we’d commit to visiting each other, in our respective spots, as often as we could.

In the next year or so, I received repeated requests from Geranium for collaboration—most of which I evaded or refused. I was holding on to hard memories of working with him, especially in his business; all too often, I’d dissolved into helpless, angry tears, thinking he was disrespecting me, and willfully resisting my efforts to cultivate financial stability.

Also, we’re different. So different. I make arrangements way in advance, arrive early, account for plot twists, plan for redundancy—not because I’m virtuous, but because I must do all these things to maintain my equanimity.

Geranium, on the other hand, doesn’t mind arriving in the nick of time, or handling self-created crises.

He’s also more willing than I am to take financial risks, spend money to make money, and take on debt. He’s a persistent and excellent salesman. He tends not to take nos personally. Nor does he shrink from conflict. In the ways he’s different from me, I see both lots that I sometimes find frustrating, and lots to admire.

In any case—he kept pushing for collaboration, claiming that our marriage would wither if we didn’t start creating things together, and I kept deflecting. I also decided that we couldn’t stay married unless he learned how to feel and process his feelings, and take full responsibility for creating his life as it was.

In early April of this year—2026—I was set to go to New York for two weeks, mostly to see Geranium. A couple weeks before I left, I dove deep into the particulars of DIY divorce in New York—and found that it was far more complex than I’d thought, and not something I could accomplish alone. I wondered if, during my visit, Geranium and I were indeed going to end up collaborating—on getting divorced. Later on, I found out that he’d been thinking the same thing.

Right before leaving, I articulated to a friend that, in my relationship with Geranium, I missed the lightness between us. The easy give and take we’d had when we’d first met, and for some years after. Once upon a time, I’d wanted to come in to work as a cargo courier on Saturdays, when he subbed as dispatcher, just so I could carry a walkie talkie emitting his voice. Back then, we’d kept our well of generosity full to overflowing. I wanted that lightness back.

During the first couple days of my April visit, we vacillated between tension and warmth. A few times, we fought. I told him he needed to engage a professional to help him feel his feelings, etc.; I extolled the benefits I’d gained from doing so myself. I knew that I was doing my work and he was not. That if he didn’t start sprinting he’d never catch up.

Back in the fall of 2025, I’d signed up for a year-long program, with Life Coach School founder Brooke Castillo, called The Weekly, which meets one hour a week (just like it says on the packet). It probably has thousands of participants—which means that I have next to no chance of getting coached live, during any given session. However, at the start of most calls, Brooke does answer a bunch of questions that participants have submitted in writing. So, the first week of my visit with Geranium, I wrote out a question in advance and offered it up.

I knew I what I’d written sounded arrogant; it kind of made me cringe. And I was willing to go cringe for the sake of getting help.

Here is what I wrote:

“I’ve been with my husband for 17 years. In that time, I’ve done tons of personal growth work. He hasn’t. When I attempt to share what I’ve learned with him, he usually deflects. I want to be with someone who’s eager to grow, and willing to take feedback. For the past two years, I’ve mostly been living apart from him, and loving my new life. If I had to choose, today, whether to marry him again, I wouldn’t. Yet I’m not committed to pursuing divorce. What questions might I ask myself to get clear on next steps?”

At first, she tried to answer my question—she said I could ask myself what I was willing to do in order to get through the process of divorce, and what I was willing to do to improve my relationship. Then she cut to the heart of the matter: She said I was suffering not because of anything my husband was or wasn’t doing but because I was stuck in the “miserable maybe,” unwilling to choose. She said I needed to decide either to leave my marriage or make it amazing. Neither choice was right or wrong. I just had to choose, commit, and follow through.

I took her counsel with me on my walk that afternoon. I considered getting divorced. That felt awful. I considered committing to creating an amazing marriage. That felt awful too. Then I realized that option number two felt awful only because I was equating it with compromise. Self-sacrifice. No wonder I didn’t want it.

And then I conceived of a third way: What if I committed to creating a marriage that was amazing not according to some abstract ideal of maturity, but amazing for me? Meaning, a marriage in which I got to fully enjoy the wonder of my darling Geranium’s company. A marriage in which we got to restore that original lightness between us.

Later that afternoon I told Geranium about the process I’d been going through and felt, in the telling, some of that lightness return. I was asking him to collaborate with me on inkling toward a shared understanding of what an amazing marriage might be.

And then—was it that evening? the next day?—the miracle happened.

In some moment when I was tense and getting tenser, I said, “Okay, feeling moment: What are you feeling?”

He said, “I feel like you….”

I cut him off. “No. What are you feeling. One word. Adjective or noun.”

He said, “I feel scared.”

I said, “I feel tense.”

Then I said, “Let’s take a deep breath together.”

We did. I took his hand and squeezed. We reconnected.

In the next week or so—for the rest of my time in Beacon—we kept doing this, whenever we needed to. At first, I was the one calling for Feeling Moments; then he started doing it too. Over and over and over. Sometimes it took us three to five Feeling Moments to return to connection; often, it only took one. But so far it’s always worked—and yielded a couple insights:

Number one: Sometimes our feelings don’t align. He might be feeling anxious, I might be feeling love. I might be feeling agitated, he might be feeling curious. It’s possible for us to have, and hold, radically different experiences of the exact same situation.

Number two: I don’t have to fix him. He doesn’t have to fix me. I can be angry. He can be scared, even terrified. None of these conditions is fatal. They come. They go. Often, they dissolve when acknowledged.

Since we started having Feeling Moments, two big things have changed.

First, we’ve reached a truce re: The Battle of Dinnertime.

For years, when we lived together in Beacon, I cooked dinner for us, every night (in order to keep Geranium from cooking dinner later, after I’d gone to bed, and waking me with food smells). Especially when the meal included fish or meat—which was likely to cool quickly and, when it did, dramatically decrease in deliciousness—I expected him to arrive on time. To reach his seat before his bowl or plate landed on the table.

He rarely complied. I got mad. I often considered going ahead and eating without him, then usually didn’t because I knew how upset he would get if I did. So I settled for yelling at him in my head: That asshole! I made dinner for him! The least he could do is show up on time!

One evening during this recent visit, I made salad topped with freshly fried liver. Geranium did not get to his seat on my schedule. I got mad. I called for a Feeling Moment. And then another, and another, and another.

In the course of these Feeling Moments—witnessing his anger, disappointment, hurt, and sadness re: the stories I was telling about his behavior—I got to explore, acknowledge, and say out loud the meaning I was making of his patterns, i.e., that his not following my rules meant that he neither appreciated nor respected my efforts (or me) and, furthermore, was just like my father at his chauvinist worst.

You know how it is to say aloud things you’ve so far only thought, and then, when you hear yourself say them, realize how ridiculous they sound? Well, that happened. And we reconnected. And, after years and years of holding it tight, I felt ready to lay that battle to rest.

Second, we’ve managed to collaborate.

As of my April visit, I had not officially worked with Geranium on a business-related project for a good three years. While I was there, he was negotiating a deal for a six-figure promotion in Manhattan. Once he ‘d signed the deal, he asked a friend to serve as manager, but the friend refused.

Hearing this, I realized that though I’d returned to North Carolina, my two-week visit over, I could still help Geranium get (and stay) organized, and keep the project on track. So I proposed that we team up—on the condition that he agree to participate in Feeling Moments, whenever I called them, and call them, as needed, himself.

He agreed. We’re collaborating. It’s going well.

Better yet, we have our lightness back. We’re friends again. And we have a strategy we can use to return to lightness and friendship, when we stray. Most of the time I get to enjoy his company.

That’s the heart of an amazing marriage—for me.

If hot composting sounds risky—I get it.

I’ve faced some stinky shitpiles myself. A couple of them I hid for years, out of fear that if anyone ever saw them I’d lose all my friends.

So far, no one’s judged me more harshly than I’ve judged myself.

Whatever might actually happen, once you rip off the tarp, probably won’t compare to the suffering you and your brain have already cooked up.

Plus, if you sign up for Hot Composting, you won’t have to uncover your pile alone. We’ll do it together. Holding our noses, if we have to.

The stinkiest shit makes the sweetest-smelling soil.

The forest knows that. The mushrooms and microbes know it. I know it.

Soon you’ll know it too.

Ready to hot-compost? Go here.

You don’t have to compost.

You can keep your shitpile covered till you die.

Eventually, the sun will burn out, the earth will go cold, and nothing we humans have ever done or failed to do will matter to anyone.

But what if you did turn your pile?

And what if, out of it, something gorgeous grew?

You don’t know what miracles might sprout from your soul-soil.

Neither do I.

I’d love to find out.

How about you?

Ready to hot-compost? Go here.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who’s already signed up! I appreciate you, and can’t wait to help you turn your piles.

Tomorrow (Friday, December 12) is the last day to book a Hot Composting session at the $44 intro price. If you’ve been holding back because you’re not sure what to expect—here’s some detail:

We’ll meet on the phone, from quiet, distraction-free locations with good reception.

I’ll welcome you, and ask what you want to compost. Maybe it falls neatly into one of the four shitpile categories (shit you shouldn’t have done, shit they shouldn’t have done, shit that’s fucked up and bullshit, shit you’re sad about); maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe all you know is that you have a thought, a feeling, an experience, a memory that’s bothering you, that you can’t set aside; maybe our first step is to dig it up and discern what’s underneath it. Great—we’ll do that.

Next? We’ll sense into the mycelial undercurrents. Follow one or more threads. I’ll ask generative questions. Help you separate stories from facts. Invite you to embrace what is, and listen for its messages.

You’ll leave the session with a new view of your pile. A sense of relief. Inklings of how to keep turning it—and where its fertility lies.

For the skinny on how to book, go here.

If you’re reading this, you’re alive. Which means you’ve encountered discomfort, and survived.

Should you try hot composting, you’ll most likely feel discomfort in a range of forms: fear, anxiety, shame, embarrassment, doubt.

Because of this, you might resist thrusting that metaphorical shovel into your steaming, glorious shitpile for the first time.

That’s all part of the process. It doesn’t mean there’s a problem. It does mean you’re a fully functioning human, with a heart, a mind, and a soul.

It may even mean you’re on your way to other feelings—like connection, acceptance, surprise, relief.

Let’s turn your pile together—one shovelful at a time.

Ready to hot-compost? Go here.

What if you approached your shitpile from the vantage of a forest?

What if you (metaphorically) let the trees and their mycelial-microbial allies—the original transmuters of stinky shit—turn yours into soil?

You might think of dirt as a mute substrate. You might see your issue, your secret, your weight, as a rocklike chunk of pain. But if you kneel down to sniff living soil—if you get close enough to stick your nose in it—you’ll see a welter of critters crawling through it.

So also with your shitpile—as it is now, as it could be.

If we looked closely, and with love, what might we find, teeming inside?

All I know for sure is that it would surprise us.

Ready to hot compost? Go here.

You don’t have to compost your shit. You can shove it under a tarp, and leave it there indefinitely. But maybe you want to compost it. Maybe you feel a spark of excitement when you imagine turning to face what you’ve pushed away.

It could be a secret you’ve never told.

It could be something you’re ashamed of, something you regret—something you think you shouldn’t have done, felt, thought, said.

It could be something that shouldn’t have happened, something you’d excise from your life if only you could go back in time with a knife.

It could be something you’ve been told to “get over,” over and over again.

I don’t believe in “getting over” shit—I believe in composting it. Into a source of fertility, out of which something new can grow. I believe in opening to what did happen, to what you did choose, and letting the meaning and purpose scrunched up inside those little inconvenients unfold.

I’ve done a shit-ton of composting in my own life. I’ve turned my cult experience, as well as my relationship with a man who died a murderer, into fertile soil. I’m not an expert, or a therapist—just a seed-bearer. That seed is etheric composting. I’d like to share it with you.

Therefore, I am offering:

Hot Composting sessions—one hour for $44.

You’ll bring your shitpile; we’ll turn it.

This offer is good through December 12, 2025. After that, the price will rise to $88.

To sign up, send $44 to @Helen-Zuman (Venmo) (preferred) or madgelma@gmail.com (PayPal) (also okay).

Once I receive your payment, I’ll contact you to set a time.

Questions? Please ask.

Thank you.

A few years ago, at a low point in my marriage, when I was considering the possibility that my beloved Geranium and I would part ways, I realized that what scared me most about this scenario wasn’t losing security or companionship, or facing my fear of failure. Rather, it was the grief I expected to roll in, tsunami-like, year after year, in wave after towering wave.

I also realized that I could handle this grief; in anticipating it, I was already proving that. Simply imagining a life without Geranium was enough to summon wrenching sorrow, and floods of tears.

Since then, I’ve felt this grief again and again—every time the plot’s twisted and I’ve thought, this is it. Meanwhile, I’ve befriended my grief, as a sign of my love for Geranium. As a reminder that I will lose him, someday, hence would do well to cherish our weave while it’s here.

Are you fighting grief? Anticipating it? Refusing to let go of shit you’ve outgrown because you fear grieving it? Watch this space for a chance to compost the shit out of that shit, and turn it into soil.

Remember Occupy? I do. In particular I remember a sign I saw in Zuccotti Park, saying, “Shit’s fucked up and bullshit.” That is, some sprawling network of people and interests are consciously or unconsciously collaborating to make life hell for the rest of us.

Perhaps, for you, this network comprises Trump and his cronies. Schumer and the Democrats. United Healthcare. The deep state. Big Tech. Big Pharma. Big Food.

For me, back in 2020, it comprised dentists, and dentistry.

One Monday in late October, my mouth erupted in excruciating pain. In response, I applied clove bud oil to my gums; cut out coffee, chocolate, and cane sugar; and ordered a large quantity of fermented cod liver oil. The day I started taking cod liver oil, the pain stopped.

But I wanted to know more about what was going on. So I went to the dentist.

He told me the pain had stopped because the tooth responsible for it—the one showing a cavity in the set of X-rays he’d had taken—had died. He recommended a root canal.

That sounded awful. So I sought a second opinion—from a “holistic” dentist. Who also swore the tooth was dead, and recommended a yank-out followed by an implant.

That also sounded awful. I left his office angry, panicked—and possessed of two shitty options instead of just one.

Back home, I started doing research—and discovered that dentistry, ever since its inception in the barber shop, had focused on cutting out inert objects that were causing trouble, rather than encouraging living tissue to heal. Those letters after your dentist’s name? “DDS”? They stand for “Doctor of Dental Surgery”—not “Doctor of Dental Health.” No wonder both dentists I’d visited had treated my teeth like a broken fence.

I also discovered a book called Cure Tooth Decay Naturally—and did a lot of what it said. Most notably, I overhauled my diet, in the direction of ancestral foods.

My tooth healed. I got to keep it. As a bonus, I stopped my knees from creaking when I climbed stairs, and my hair from going gray.

I did not stop dentists from dentisting. I did not take on, much less bring down, the dental-industrial complex. But I did learn something about its roots. And I did compost my anger and panic into power to care for myself in my own special way.

Up next (and last)—Shitpile #4: Shit you’re sad about.

Gnashing your teeth over what “they’re” doing? Feeling angry and helpless? Watch this space for a chance to compost the shit out of that shit, and turn it into soil.

The short of this shitpile: the host of a local literary series shouldn’t have questioned my fitness to read at her events, or insisted that I shove certain items under a virtual tarp, i.e., scrub them from the Internet.

(Read the full story of my cancelation here.)

The truth? She absolutely should have.

Yes, I felt grief, shame, embarrassment, and regret, while she was prosecuting me for thought crime. But also I came away with a bunch of understandings:

That I prefer to go where I’m enthusiastically welcomed, not grudgingly tolerated.

That I could start my own darn open mic.

That, rather than hide the residue of my association with Lyndon McLeod from public view, I wished to continue to examine, critique, and compost it.

That when someone attempts to put me on trial, I can step aside. Stay out of the courtroom. Refuse to answer questions based on assumptions that I’m guilty.

That I could weather cancelation.

I’ll admit, this shitpile isn’t fully composted. When I check the local paper for event listings, I sometimes find myself hoping that the literary series in question has suffocated under the weight of its host’s quest for purity.

However, I’m not wishing that I belonged to that community, or that the host had not come after me.

Yay, cancelation! I composted the shit out of that shit, and turned it into courage.

Up next—Shitpile #3: Shit that’s fucked up and bullshit.

Do you know for sure that so and so shouldn’t have done such and such—or should at least burn in hell for it? Watch this space for a chance to compost the shit out of that shit, and turn it into soil.

Around 11 A.M. on Friday, September 27, 2024, after completing my daily three-hour writing session, I walked out the front door of the Wheelhouse, at Earthaven Ecovillage, in western North Carolina, hoping to go for my daily six-mile walk.

At the bottom of the driveway, I found not a road but a river—courtesy of Hurricane Helene. It had ravaged our roads and bridges (if not our homes) and wreaked havoc all around us.

Friday afternoon, my housemate told me that an all-community meeting had been scheduled for the next morning, at 9. I recoiled. Too early! Yes, I wanted to help deal with the crisis—after I’d completed the rituals I relied on to nourish myself.

That night, while I was sleeping, my brain came up with a genius solution: rise at 2 A.M.! So we could write for three hours, and walk six miles, by 9.

One small problem: trying to navigate a day on, say, four hours of sleep is kind of like driving drunk. You can do it, but you’re far more likely to fuck up.

And so, around 6 A.M., while eating breakfast—lunch?—at my desk, I opened a fresh jar of ferment (classifying it as a safe solid, not a dangerous liquid), and spilled kraut juice on my open laptop.

That day, on breaks from helping out with hurricane response, I tried dumb shit like turning my keyboard upside over a fan and sealing the entire device inside a tupperware of rice—all the while lusting after a time machine. If only I could turn the clock back to 6 A.M. and open that jar of ferment somewhere, anywhere else.

Saturday night, my brain—intent on delivering the message, “You shouldn’t have done that!”—wouldn’t let me sleep. So I turned on the light, opened my journal, and challenged myself to come up with ten-plus reasons why spilling kraut juice on my laptop was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

I came up with eleven. That helped. Then I used The Work of Byron Katie to question the thought “I shouldn’t have done that,” and turn it around. After that, I explored my relationship with Apple, sensitive electronics, the Internet. Opened to the possibility that this pause could prove fertile. Reckoned with the fact that, despite the fans and rice, Starlight (my laptop) was not going to heal. Turned the pile enough to soothe myself to sleep.

The next day, I started to articulate the links between my cult conditioning and my response to the all-hands call: at Zendik, we believed we were fighting a war against the Deathculture, hence facing a constant emergency. In this context, considering my own wants and needs was treason. After the hurricane, I’d pulled this story out of my psyche and laid it on Earthaven.

Further, I realized: since living at Zendik had decidedly not worked out for me, I could safely assume that, when tempted to apply a pattern I’d learned there, I’d be better off doing the opposite.

Within a couple weeks of Krautgate—having run a number of experiments concerning the kind of relationship I wished to have with technology—I bought a 2020 MacBook, on sale, from Walmart. I named her Rose Rose (in honor of Rose, Starlight’s predecessor, who’d died of cold and old age the previous winter).

I love her. She’s just right. I no longer believe I shouldn’t have spilled kraut juice on Starlight.

Up next—Shitpile #2: Shit they shouldn’t have done.

Torturing yourself over something you shouldn’t have done? Watch this space for a chance to compost the shit out of that shit, and turn it into soil.

Having emerged from the cave, I’m ready to try something new. Something I’ve been considering for a good long time. It has to do with composting, of course, and the shitpiles that squat, neglected, beyond our private pales.

Sometimes those shitpiles don’t bother us; sometimes they do. Either way, they’re not yielding the bountiful fertility they might yield, if only we would turn them.

Next Monday (December 8), I’m going to offer to help you do just that. In the meantime, I’ll lead you through a taxonomy of shitpiles—within which you just might recognize yours.

Tomorrow we’ll peek at Shitpile #1: Shit you shouldn’t have done.

Hello fellowbeings,

Two days ago, on Samhain (Halloween), I sent my editor an overhaul of my novel, Miracle Cave. It still needs work (of course)—and it’s a dramatic improvement over the version I sent her two years ago. I am so glad I decided, back in May 2024, to eschew frequent posting and retreat, as a writer, to my revisionary cave.

I took the photo accompanying this message this past August, from within the Massacre Cave, on the Isle of Eigg, off the west coast of Scotland. In my story, I make a miracle out of the massacre for which the cave was named.

In other news, the Kindle version of my memoir, Mating in Captivity, went on sale, on Samhain. It will stay there till November 7. Grab it, while you can, for the bargain price of $2.99.

Right now, it’s ranked #9 in the category Human Sexuality. Yesterday, it reached #6. Want to help it get to #1? That would be super fun.

Are you deep in a cave of some kind? Just coming out of one? Hit reply and let me know.

Dear humans,

I’m writing to you from New York. I’d been planning this visit with my family since early September, and, despite Hurricane Helene’s touchdown at Earthaven, did manage to catch my train.

Today is the first day I’ve felt capable of reaching out. I’ve been recovering from a couple physical complaints, and also dealing with the fallout of severe laptop damage (caused by kraut juice paired with poor judgment and exhaustion).

I still find myself tearing up whenever I think of the storm—even though I never actually felt endangered, and no one at Earthaven got hurt. I guess it’s just deeply disturbing to witness that kind of havoc—downed trees, mudslides, trailing power lines, collapsed bridges, undercuts, river-ravaged roads—up close.

If it would delight you to contribute to Earthaven’s recovery, via GoFundMe, please do. (And then let me know so I can thank you.)

Also I’ve noted a resurgence of Zendik-born anxiety. At Zendik, we pretended we were at war, and in a state of perpetual emergency; thus, failing to be constantly on call was treason.

After the hurricane, my self-hate machine shifted into high gear—screaming that I should be doing more, that everyone was watching me and finding me wanting, that I was losing social capital by the minute, that I ought to be out there clearing brush even if I felt depleted.

This did not happen because of anything that anyone at Earthaven did or said. It happened because I’d fed that story every day of my five years at Zendik, and had not yet, in similar proportion, nourished a new one.

In other news: I did relish taking my six-mile walk, a couple days in a row, on practically car-free roads. This reminded me of a song I’d written, years earlier, in which I’d imagined kudzu beating back asphalt, and walkers taking charge.

Here’s the song:

Last but not least:

Danke sehr schoen to my amazing beta readers! I deeply appreciate your feedback.

This morning, as I began hand-rewriting the first chapter, I carried your voices with me—while reminding my brain that my job right now is not to improve the text, but reimagine it. Make a newer, more glorious mess.

Thanks a billion to those who’ve already volunteered to beta-read the first 9,500 words (38 pages) of Miracle Cave.

I appreciate you immensely, and look forward to hearing your feedback.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and would like to, please let me know by tonight (the night of Monday, September 9).

If you missed the details of my request (what I’m asking, what you get), please find them here and here.

Thanks again!

Hello again fellowbeings,

I realized that I’d neglected to state, in my previous email, the name of my novel and what it’s about. It’s called Miracle Cave.

Here’s a synopsis:

Gale MacLeod would give anything to forget Granville Cabot, and what he did to her their senior year at Harvard. She’s shared the details only with her brother, Lichen—who’s vowed not to speak to her until she also shares the perpetrator’s name.

He’s kept his vow for twenty-six years. And she’s kept her silence.

But then Granville receives the Republicrat nomination for the Presidency, and Gale’s boss at Whipper Orwell Admissions Consulting orders her to edit Granville’s son’s college application essay. She’s all set to refuse, when she realizes—with the help of a mysterious medicine called Mindcelium—that she could use the assignment to anonymously blow holes in Granville’s campaign.

Her plan succeeds; she sets off a media hurricane. However, she fails to predict that Lichen, watching from afar, will intuit who’s behind the storm—and get his precious name.

Both siblings want revenge on Granville. But Lichen’s wilder than Gale, and willing to take risks that she would never take. If she’s to stop him, she must join him—and confront her worst fear, face to face.

Also: you might be wondering how long your beta-reading will take.

9,000 words equals 30-40 manuscript pages, double-spaced. If you read a page a minute, you’ll need 30-40 minutes for reading, plus whatever time you choose to invest in conveying your thoughts. 5 to 10 minutes could be enough.

Please let me know by Monday, September 9 if you’re interested.

For the rest of the details, go here.

Thanks!

Hello fellowbeings,

Greetings from the cave—where I’ve been revising my novel, scene by scene, while applying, and preparing to apply, to artist residencies and the like, for the first time since 2014.

The moonshot on my list is the Wallace Stegner Fellowship, at Stanford University. Stegner Fellows attend a weekly three-hour writing workshop, and receive $50,000 a year for two years.

Each cycle, 1200 fiction writers and poets apply; 10 (0.8%) are accepted.

To apply, I must answer a couple essay questions and submit up to 9,000 words if fiction.

I would like those 9,000 words to kick ass. Hence, I am seeking beta readers.

What does it mean to beta-read?

To me, it means tracking your reactions to a text while you read it.

You don’t have to be a writer to do this. You just need to be willing and able to notice, and record, how you feel as you read.

Bonus points for linking what you feel to actions (like putting the manuscript down, or staying up too late to keep reading) and/or discerning and articulating precisely why you feel that way.

For example: You’re reading scene four, and, eight paragraphs in, you start feeling confused—because you can’t figure out why the protagonist did that thing she just did. Out of confusion, you stop reading and do something else.

That’s the sort of thing I’d love to know.

In other words, what I want from you, as a beta reader, is an account of your reading experience: what you felt, when and why you felt it, and what each feeling drove you to do.

Or, if that’s too complicated, you could just say, “I whizzed through it and wanted more when I got to the end,” or, “Partway through scene five, I started snoring.”

Or you could disregard all this, and respond in your own particular way.

Whatever feedback you offer—however you offer it—I promise to love it.

How do you know if this task is for you?

It intrigues, excites, and delights you. You’re like, “Lemme get my hands on that manuscript! I can’t wait to read it!”

What do you get if you complete it?

• A sneak peek at my story.

• The chance to influence its development.

• My eternal gratitude.

• Your name in the book’s acknowledgments.

What do you do if you’re interested?

Let me know by Monday, September 9—either by commenting on this post or replying to this email.

I will email you the manuscript by Friday, September 13, as a PDF. Check your spam/junk folder if you don’t see it.

Please send me your feedback by Tuesday, October 1. That way I’ll have plenty of time to absorb, process, and apply it by the November 1 Stegner deadline.

Please reply or comment with questions.

Thanks for considering my request.