What would you have me know about pivoting in my life?

MAR! It’s been a few weeks since you’ve checked in around specific ideas, which brings an added layer of appropriateness to your question—because your life is pivoting. It often is. Life itself is moving in magical sequences that you cannot always perceive, even though I know you believe in the magic happening behind the scenes. You love magic!

I’ve watched you—or, rather, I’ve felt you—move mountains for the things you care deeply about. I’ve also watched you run from a place of fear when things become too hard or uncertain. Did you know that you can be both ever-changing and have staying power? That you can grow, evolve, and pivot without always having to leave?

Could you ever believe that people like having you close? That your presence is a calm center for them to rest? Could you let them rest with you before fluttering away—afraid of being left, so you leave anyway? Could you rest, too? I know. Don’t scoff.

Look around at all the people who love you and support the next move you make. It might feel hard to believe that you are supported when you didn’t grow up feeling the kind of support, effort, comfort, or financial security you needed. It’s no wonder that now you feel perfectly fine spending any cent you earn on supporting others and creating beautiful experiences for yourself. You learned to make things happen. You learned not to wait for someone else to provide the comfort, the opportunity, or the safety. But you are allowed to receive now, too.

I hear your heart beat at the idea of being a writer—like you were born for the books. I can feel us sway to the melodies that will one day be stitched together with your poetry in such meaningful ways. And let me remind you: these skills, along with the lyrics you write, came through pivoting. A lot of it.

You have already learned how to change direction. You have already learned how to find another way when the original way no longer fits. You have already proven that you can begin again. That is a beautiful strength to have—but you don’t always have to use it. And, my love, there is something else I want you to know about changing direction.

A pivot may belong to you, but its consequences do not always belong to you alone. Sometimes the choices you make with your life are deeply personal. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes there are people standing beside you, loving you, trusting you, building plans with you, or simply believing that you will still be there tomorrow. When you make a significant move, they may have to move, too. They may have to grieve something they didn’t choose to lose. They may have to reorganize their lives around a decision they didn’t make.

That doesn’t mean you owe everyone your staying.

It means you owe the people affected by your choices your honesty, your consideration, and your accountability.

You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to want something different. You are allowed to outgrow a life, a place, a relationship, an identity, or a version of yourself. But freedom does not mean freedom from consequence. And choosing yourself does not mean you get to pretend that nobody else is impacted by the choosing.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is make the move.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is stay.

And sometimes the work is figuring out which one you are actually doing.

Because I want you to be careful with the word pivot. It is a beautiful word. It sounds intentional. It sounds brave. It sounds like movement and growth and possibility. But sometimes a pivot is avoidance dressed up as evolution.

Sometimes leaving is easier than staying through the uncomfortable conversation. Easier than disappointing someone to their face. Easier than sitting with the uncertainty of not knowing whether something can be repaired. Easier than admitting that you are scared. Easier than allowing yourself to be needed. Easier than discovering that the thing you thought you had to escape might actually be something you could work through.

You know yourself well enough to ask this question now: Am I moving toward something, or am I running from something? And, sweetheart, sometimes the answer will be both. That is okay.

Just don’t label the running a calling simply because it feels more beautiful that way.

If you make a move, make it consciously. Look at what it will cost—not just you, but the people who love you. Tell the truth before you go. Give people the dignity of knowing what is happening. Don’t make someone else carry the emotional consequences of a decision you were unwilling to take responsibility for making.

You can leave with love. You can change with integrity. You can choose yourself without making someone else the villain for being hurt by your choice. AND you can stay without making staying mean that you have abandoned yourself.

Babe, I want you to remember that there’s always a Plan B, but this time around—this year of life—I want you to stick with Plan A. 31 is going to be big, Mar. I feel your fear in knowing that.

Let yourself fall in love.

Let yourself ground.

Let yourself be supported.

Rest with the lovely people around you, and stay.

You don’t have to keep moving just because you can. You don’t have to leave when staying feels vulnerable. There is magic in the pivot, yes, but there is magic in remaining, too. This time, let yourself discover what happens when you stay long enough to see it unfold.

And if someday you truly do need to go, I want you to go awake. Not running or disappearing or calling avoidance freedom (You’ve heard and written about this before). I want you to go knowing what you are choosing, knowing what it will change, and willing to carry your part of the weight that comes with it.

Because that is another kind of growing up, Mar.

Not learning how to leave. You already know how to leave. this is about learning how to choose—and then lovingly, bravely, responsibly live with the choice. Saturn return is settling, now sweet cheeks. You need to own this responsibility.

I love you,

Love

XO MAR

w/ thanks to

I’m turning on sprinklers and mapping my route from one end of the property to the other, making sure every hanging basket heavy with flowers gets a good soak in miricle grow. Bees keep landing on my black, long-sleeved, water-resistant shirt. The grass is dry. The flowers are thirsty. The sprinklers move in their slow, predictable arcs, and I follow behind them, doing what needs to be done, which just feels trying at this point. I like the days I do a service, and my newest task is to supply all the pre need bronze scrolls into our endless Niche walls through the Memory Green Nature Walk. I like the podcasts I'm tuned into right now and singing the playlists I've made to the geese as I work.

Chocolate marks the creases around my mouth (which I think Jo finds charming even though she always wipes it off—or it’s embarrassing for her? Whatever). After a long day of trimming cemetery grounds, black crust collects inside my nose. The hair all over my body is untrimmed, unkept, thick. My nails are cracking, with dirt underneath them, unclipped. I’m underslept, underpaid, and overworked, like most of us, and lately my body feels like an honest record of it. There is exhaustion behind my eyes. There are things I haven’t gotten around to, messages I haven’t answered, ideas I keep postponing, and a creative life that seems to exist somewhere just beyond the edge of my working hours. I keep thinking about the strange arithmetic that adulthood and how many hours can be sold before there are no hours left for the things that make you feel like yourself.

It feels like a time of great tension. A tension that doesn’t necessarily announce itself but sits like the sound of a fan blowing: a constant backdrop. I know I need the burnout to stop, but I also know I needed the burnout in some strange way—to finally be forced to rest, to stop outrunning myself long enough to hear whatever my inner guidance has been trying to say. I’m trying to sit with it. Trying not to immediately turn every feeling into a plan, every idea into a project, every moment of uncertainty into something I need to fix. Ultimately it’s the burnout that needs me to stop.

Because I’m also a dreamer, to a fault. The dreams wake up in my fatigue. They arrive when I have the least energy to do anything with them. I can be exhausted and some how still have a complete vision for a project, a story, an image, a way of making collaborations that didn’t exist in me before. My brain is an idea machine. A creative generator that seems to have no off switch. It’s too fast. Sometimes it’s exhilarating. Sometimes it’s exhausting. I can lie down full battery-low-depleted and still have five new ideas before I fall asleep. I have little energy to execute the project, but I cannot stop what asks to commence. Tired but inspired is the disclosure notice I’d put on a T-shirt these days.

This recent strain of dread is a low-grade scent that follows me around. It’s there while I’m dragging hoses across the grounds. It’s there while I’m standing at work, slinging bread to a building-wrapped lineup of customers on a long, busy Saturday morning. It’s there when I realize I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, technically, but maybe not what I actually need to be doing. There’s a creative showcase being sacrificed behind this burnout. Something in me keeps asking for attention while another part of me keeps saying there isn’t enough time. There isn’t enough money. There isn’t enough energy. Later, I tell myself. I’ll do it later.

But then there are these other parts of my life that feel so simple and so completely right. Waking up on soft pastel-pink pillows with Jo beside me, a small orange cat curled up between us. Sending long memos to Christian and Mich, and all the pals out East. I’m high on conversations that keep unfolding long after they’ve virtually ended. Hugging Nana. Hiking with bb J. Ideas. Intellectual inspiration. Getting to side-hug cool Sam after said busy mornings. Finding a few quiet minutes when I can put my toes into the ocean and feel cold saltwater wrap around them. These things don’t fix the exhaustion. They don’t resolve the question of what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. They just make the life I’m already living feel vivid and tasteful. These are the people and the moments that bring shivers up my spine and are also so right

I’m restless. That might be the simplest way to say it. Restless in my body, restless in my brain, restless with ideas. I want to make things. I want to follow the threads that keep appearing in my mind. I want to give myself enough time to find out what some of these ideas actually are instead of immediately filing them away under not possible right now. And yet, when I finally have a free moment, sometimes all I want to do is lie down. There is a particular cruelty in being full of inspiration and empty of energy at the same time.

I am trying something that doesn’t come naturally to me: resting without turning rest into another task. Giving myself time instead of scheduling it with limits. Sitting with the tension. Listening for the quieter voice underneath the machinery of my brain. Trying to distinguish between the ideas that are asking to be made and the ideas that are simply the beautiful byproduct of being a person who notices too much. I don’t have to execute every dream the moment it arrives, some things can live in me for a while (but my memory often fails me).

There will always be chocolate at the corners of my mouth. The dirt under my nails is probably permanent. My hair is everywhere. The cemetery grass is thirsty. The flowers need water. The sprinklers will keep ticking through their cycles. The bees will keep touching down— all completely unconcerned with astrology, burnout, career trajectories, or whether I’m making the most of my life. A flower opens. Water gathers on a leaf and falls. Along the Galloping Goose, a someone (so many someones) rode past on a bicycle. The whole world keeps doing what it does. The eclipse is happening, whether I understand it or not.

That is what feels so strange about this morning. I am waiting for some internal weather system to announce itself. Some unmistakable sign that I should change everything. A change of heart might be at hand, but I don’t know what that means yet. I only know that something in me has become harder to ignore. I am tired of pretending that exhaustion is the same thing as purpose. I am tired of telling myself that the creative part of my life can wait until I have more time, more money, more energy, a cleaner house, a better sleep schedule, a body that looks more put together, a life that makes more sense. underneath the ordinary mechanics of this morning—there is that familiar scent of existential dread and I fear the rock bottom of this one requiring more responsibility (or a different strain) than before.

XO MAR

Songs For the Times:
How good it is by The MorningSiders
Heavy Old Moon by Kelly Boesch
Forgive Myself By GRIFF
Dabble by Nic D and Connor Price

It’s been a long ride—literally and otherwise. I’m still processing the drive across Canada. The endless stretches of highway singing the same songs on repeat with Jo in the passenger seat as we did on our first road trip in 2025. The appointments. The unexpected cemetery transfer that brought me into a completely different crew, supporting people in new ways. Long-distance dynamics. Dating. Friend losses and sweet reconnections. Family time. Graduating school. Along the whole ride I've heard my inner-roommate whisper the same question in different forms: Who are you becoming?

The biggest story has been learning who I am as a friend, and confronting who I’ve called a friend based on what I believed I was worthy of (Venus currently transiting my 12th? Maybe)

For a long time, I thought I wanted passion. What I was often chasing was intensity. Or maybe intensity felt familiar. I knew how to perform inside emotionally charged relationships. I knew how to become indispensable. My character could step onto the stage, play the role beautifully, and keep performing until the curtains closed. Looking back, I don’t know why I was so surprised by the silent vacancy of applause afterward.

I live for praise.

That feels vulnerable to admit as someone who prides themselves on being hardworking and self-sufficient, but my nervous system learned early that love sounded like, “You did a good job.” You love me if I do good.

That early-learned belief shaped almost every relationship I entered. I became useful—helping, fixing, providing, carrying, and listening. Acts of service became the way I loved people, but over the last few years I’ve realized they also became the way I hoped to be loved. If I serve enough, maybe someone would tell me I mattered. If you know me, you know I’m a words guy. My acts of service curated the affirmation I required. Looking back, I can see how transactional that pattern became subconsciously. I wasn’t manipulating anyone (though that might be a definition of altering outcome), I was trying to earn something I didn’t believe I deserved freely. This isn’t going to change overnight, and is still how I best feel loved or where I feel purpose.

Past relationships gave me the emotional high of instant gratification because they were built on intensity. I’ve confused emotional momentum with emotional health and that distinction may not have happened without the spiral swirly swirl I went through all of 2024 and 2025.

My last relationship taught me mostly about impermanence. It taught me that I can feel deeply certain about something and still face its ending. At first, that realization made me cynical. If everything eventually disappears, why build anything at all? After moving what feels like seven thousand times since 2022, experiencing friendship breakups that somehow felt like being sixteen again, losing my first love, I don’t think endings scare me the way they once did.

Over the last year, I’ve lost a few friendships. Every one of them felt sudden. Every one of them makes sense in hindsight. I learned that shared information becomes free information and the people will tell stories through the lens of their own assumption, where tone that never existed gets added to their version of the script. My intentions rewritten and transferred to people who were never part of the original conversation.

At one point, a mutual friend of an ex reached out to tell me they didn’t appreciate the way I’d spoken about the person (which was really my relaying events, confusion, and hurt— not digs or slams, which they also acknowledged at the time by telling me I was being generous and patient?). This was someone who had previously agreed there had been mistreatment, encouraged me to keep sharing my process, and assured me they were there for me. Anyways, the story changed. I don’t know where that version of me exists now. Probably somewhere I no longer need to visit.

Another friend I genuinely believed would be in my life forever—someone who felt more like chosen family than friendship—told me I had crossed a boundary by showing up at her mom’s house after we’d loosely made plans. The plans hadn’t actually been confirmed, and maybe I assumed too much. Maybe I assumed we were those kinds of friends. What broke my heart wasn’t being wrong; it was never hearing from her again without opportunity to understand each other. We were clearly not in the same reality.

People often tell me I handled everything with grace. Maybe I did? You probably weren’t hearing the midnight cries echoing across the country. You probably weren’t my friend or ex who was living with the version of me who couldn’t imagine a future that looked different from the one I’d planned. You probably weren’t the sweet man who quietly let my dysregulated self cry in his car until I remembered how to breathe. Grace often looks like falling apart somewhere no one else can see.

I’ve always felt capable of maintaining closeness across provinces. Geography has never been hard for me (I mean, it was my worst subject, but that’s not the context). Being back in BC has been beautiful for returning to a community I haven’t truly lived with for years and feeling like no time has passed. And I get to stay close in contact with those out East this time. It’s a weird switcharoo.

I’ve found myself less interested in relationships where communication disappears the moment things become uncomfortable. The people unwilling to elaborate, repair, collaborate, or stay. I don’t think those are the relationships I want to keep building—though, I still miss almost everyone I’ve ever loved. That’s true. And the versions we were whilst getting to know each other… UGH magic— no less magical than the safe versions of ourselves we GET to be now with more trust and less anxiety.

I’ve become incredibly grateful for calmer waters. For years I asked myself, How do I find the right partner? Recently, that question changed. Instead, I’ve started asking, How do I recognize and nurture the kinds of relationships that already teach me what love feels like?

Friendship isn’t a waiting room before partnership. It isn’t second place. It isn’t what happens until someone falls in love with me. It’s one of the purest places I’ve ever learned what love actually looks like. It’s where I’ve been challenged without being abandoned, celebrated without needing to perform, and loved without having to earn it. I’ve been so fortunate to have so many fucking amazing humans in my world all my life and I am forever grateful (god this is just sounding like a previous gratitude post)

Dating as I enter my thirties feels... neat? My priorities and desires don’t always line up with society’s timeline, and they haven’t for a long time. Whatever ingrained beliefs I had about how life was supposed to look were lovingly demolished when I was younger and decided to pursue relationships that already sat outside the script I’d been handed. Once I accepted my life wasn’t going to follow a traditional dialogue, I stopped worrying so much about my improv.

I know I want a wife. I think I know what I want in a wife. Then again, every relationship has humbled me just enough to realize that what I think I want and what actually brings me peace aren’t always the same thing. Apparently, chemistry is a terrible architect.

The nicest part is that there isn’t any urgency anymore. I think urgency is usually anxiety wearing a moustache? The more I’ve learned about myself, the less interested I am in proving myself and the more interested I am in recognizing what feels like peace and trust that it all happens when it’s meant to. The stars know best.

I’ve probably learned more about love through my friendships than I ever expected to. My friendships have always been deeply intimate—platonically romantic, even. We tell each other we love each other, cry together, celebrate each other, show up when life gets funky, and leave long voice notes that qualify as short podcasts. So sometimes I wonder what would actually be so different about having a wife?

A friend asked me recently, “What do you think you’re actually missing in your life that a wife would bring?”

It caught me off guard because I don’t think the answer is that I’m incomplete. My life already feels incredibly full. If I’m honest, what I long for is companionship, loyalty, commitment, and the subtly that exists in romantic love. Someone whose hand naturally reaches for mine while we’re wandering through a grocery store. Someone who hears about my weird Tuesday before anyone else does. Someone to make an already meaningful life feel even more inspirational.

I lightly re-entered the dating scene May 2025 and somewhere along the way I accepted the label of Lover Boy. I’m no longer contesting the charges. I can’t help it—I’m soft.

Jo insists I’m too tender to be spicy but somehow too hot to be cute. I still don’t know what category that puts me in. Hallmark protagonist? Golden retriever with emotional literacy (although christian insists I'm more border collie)? Human weighted blanket? Whatever it is, I’ve stopped trying to outgrow it and we haven’t even entered our prime.

I’m mushy. I’m romantic. I remember the little things. I like writing thoughtful notes. I love making people feel seen. I fall a little in love with the ordinary rituals of caring for someone.

Jo says it makes her want to throw up.

I choose to receive that as a compliment.

XO
Mar

SONGS:
Heart of Gold by GRIFF
it's a real cruel world by Hollie Humberstone
Mean by Taylor Swift
Did I say too much? by The Beaches

Starting with A letter from Love:

June 7 2026
Dear Love, what would you have me know about Trust?

Hello, precious dewy-eyed raindrop.
How sweet it is to receive your question about a concept you've always had such a complicated relationship with-

Trust.

It is one of the bravest things a heart can choose. You ask who and what has your back. The honest answer is that time reveals this more faithfully than intention ever can. People may mean well and still disappoint you. Others may approach with hidden motives while speaking beautiful words. You have approached people with nothing but curiosity, generosity, and an open heart, only to be questioned, misunderstood, or rejected because of assumptions they carried long before they met you. Sometimes you became the recipient of someone else's fear, betrayal, or unhealed wounds. They weren't responding only to you—they were responding to a story they had already learned about trust. That hurts. And you hold yourself accountable for times in which you had done the same.

I know you aren't interested in blame. You have never wanted to keep score. But your heart remembers:
It remembers being accused when your intentions were pure.
It remembers being lied to by people you loved.
It remembers prayers that seemed to echo back in silence-
from partners, parents, God, and sometimes yourself. Of course trust feels tender. 

I also see the other collection of memories-every person who arrived exactly when they said they would. Every unexpected kindness. The friendships that deepened because both of you chose honesty over comfort.
I see the countless ways life has met you halfway. I have watched you heal wounds you thought would define you forever and survive circumstances that should have convinced you to close your heart.
You still make new friends, share your heart, choose curiosity over certainty more often than fear would like. The way you remain open after so much disappointment amazes even me. And more than that, I feel the space you continue to make for me—Love.
Thank you.

If you'll let me tell you something about trust, it is this: Keep your chin up, Keep your heart open, Keep your honesty flowing, And keep your intuition awake. An open heart does not require an unguarded mind. 

You already know the difference between someone who meets you where you are and someone who simply tells you what they think you want to hear. You know the feeling of genuine presence, and you know the eery discomfort of people-pleasing. One creates connection; the other breeds resentment because it asks someone to abandon themselves in order to be accepted. Trust your ability to notice the difference. Fear has its place. But fear was never meant to become your permanent residence. It should inform your choices, not imprison your heart.
Trust has never belonged to the faint of heart. That is courageous work.

Society has become invested in appearance over authenticity. People have learned to perform connection instead of experiencing it. They fear being disliked more than they fear being dishonest with themselves. Trust cannot grow where people are performing versions of themselves instead of living as themselves.
For someone whose inner world matches their outer one.
For someone willing to say, "I was wrong."
That kind of honesty creates safety. Yes BB, it is hard to trust others in a world that rewards performance, comparison, and approval, when everyone seems afraid of being fully seen, but please don't let the culture convince you that cynicism is wisdom. Guard your heart with discernment, not with walls- There is a difference.

Through all of this, there are places where your trust has never been misplaced.
You can trust your soul, which has never tried to become someone you are not.
You can trust the universe, it has never stopped inviting you toward the fullest expression of who you are becoming. They have only ever called you home.
Trust knowing that disappointment is not evidence that trust was foolish—it could be evidence that not everyone has learned to hold another person's heart with the same care that you do. And whenever you are unsure... Trust Love. I will be here.

West coast pine and cedar smell nostalgic in the June heat opposed to the maple trees that were occasionally sweet or sticky— depending on the dynamic of out East. Neither good nor bad, just different. People have asked which feels better: coming home or leaving it.

The answer is both.

There is comfort in returning to familiarity, but there was also a healing in building a life from nothing after heartbreak. Trust didn’t come back all at once. And I’m not even saying I’m fully there. Trust is returning in pieces—through people who show up consistently, communities that welcomed me after I finally stopped guarding every part of myself, and places that held no history for me to wrestle with. I learned through my Saturn return that peace wasn’t something attached to geography and responsibility is not only tied to loyalty. It was something I carried once I started trusting myself instead of my surroundings.

Still, waking up in BC to salted ocean air feels peaceful. Familiarity doesn’t erase bittersweet processing, but it certainly makes it easier to breathe through.

At the beginning of June, Jo and I packed for ten days in my tiny blue Honda Civic, Gwyneth, and drove from the GTA to Vancouver Island.

Before we even left, I’d worked twenty-eight straight days between the café and the cemetery while trying to organize a cross-country camping trip. Unsurprisingly, my brain became its own background static and I shoved down the unprocessed events of May, including the goodbyes (for now). Jo read all of the wonderfully heart-melting cards to me from the loves who showed up at my door in the final days before my departure and that was one of the most touching moments of the first leg.

The drive itself was equal parts magical and ridiculous.

We camped through downpours around Lake Superior, Aaron, and Riding Mountain Provincial Park. We discovered our first tick—in the car, because of course it couldn’t just stay outside where it belongs. Saskatchewan gifted Jo a cold severe enough that we surrendered to a hotel for the night to regroup. I had dreams of finally getting a proper workout after a week on the road, only to discover their “gym” consisted of one treadmill and a lonely pair of twelve-pound dumbbells. Humbling.

The Prairies stretched endlessly until Alberta finally remembered curves existed. Mountains appeared on the horizon like a reward for surviving Saskatchewan. Riding Mountain gave us a black bear, a baby deer, and approximately four trillion mosquitoes. I also fed the chipmunks.

I know.

Save your emails.

Banff was everything I remembered. The campground didnt receive our site change online and still had us placed beside the bathrooms, a situation Jo rejected with remarkable conviction, and the park staff kindly moved us to a quieter site complete with free firewood, beautiful sunrises, and trails that reminded me why I never sit still for very long. Jo even attempted to “walk me out” before our final stretch, as though exhausting me once would prevent me from wanting to wander again.

Admirable effort.

Impossible task. Though, temporarily I was down and out.

Driving through the Okanagan felt like flipping through childhood photographs. I pointed out places I loved growing up, many now marked by the annual rhythm of wildfire. By the time we reached my parents’ place on the Lower Mainland, we collapsed.

The morning we were supposed to leave for Victoria, I ran my hands through freshly washed hair after what felt like my first real shower in a week.

Then I felt it.

A tick.

I’ve researched this fear into exhaustion. I know the protocols. I know how they’re supposed to be removed. Fear looked at all of that information, laughed, and took over anyway.

I pulled it.

Dropped it.

Lost it.

Exactly what you’re not supposed to do.

I don’t know how long it had been there, whether it was attached long enough to matter, or even what species it was. I only know that I ended up in the hospital to have the remaining pieces removed, started a course of doxycycline, and have spent every day since wondering whether every ache, every sharp pain, every strange sensation means something.

My Lyme bloodwork is booked for July 7.

I’ve lived through a cancer scare. I’ve managed autoimmune disease for half my life. I’ve come frighteningly close to anaphylaxis.

None of those unsettled me quite like this.

Fear has a way of ignoring statistics and convincing you certainty exists where it doesn’t. I’ve been running through and making meaning of it all.

Back in Victoria, I started part-time work with a company I’d previously worked for while waiting on medical answers and several other life decisions that still feel suspended in midair. I’m mostly unhoused at the moment, moving between my parents’ place and friends’ homes. Being surrounded by people who love you is a privilege. Living without a space that feels like your own is still disorienting.

For two years I resisted coming home. Part of me stayed out East trying to prove something—or fix something—that was never interested in being fixed. I kept investing trust where it wasn’t being returned, believing enough effort could make instability feel secure.

It couldn’t.

Coming home has reminded me that trust isn’t built by forcing uncertain things to become certain. It’s built by returning to what consistently meets you where you are.

Right now, that looks like sitting with my friend through her own heartbreak in the ways I never allowed her to sit with mine. It looks like family birthdays I would have otherwise missed. It looks like accepting help instead of treating independence as a personality trait.

It looks like rebuilding.

Not because I came home to British Columbia.

Because, somewhere along the drive, I finally processed the coming home to myself.

The moon is in my natal sign— Happy Capricorn Full moon, cutie pies. May we all remember to breathe free and gentle into our skin, rest beside those who sooth our souls, and trust our bodies natural cycles. I am sitting here after a surrender to the West with trust, despite the uncertainty after a warm Summer Solstice. Loving you all where you are—as you are. Happy June/July.

Stay So Kind
XO
MAR

Songs For You:
'Hold Back' by Miles Hardt
'Hard Out Here' by RAYE
'Hell On Me' by Kacey Musgraves
'Monsters' by All Time Low, Blackbear

I’ve been thinking a lot about the people who don’t say things—not liars, more so the people who genuinely don’t realize they’re withholding something gold because they’ve become so good at minimizing their own needs. Minimizing themselves and their worth (which is far greater than we all feel sometimes). We say “it’s fine” and mean it in the moment, don’t ask for reassurance because we don’t want to be a burden, and think we’re keeping the peace.

I know this because I’ve been one of them. Protector parts birthing martyr tendencies…

What I’ve been realizing lately is that trust isn’t built on good intentions. It’s built on communication. For a long time, I thought not needing anything made me easy to be around. Independent. Low-maintenance. And now I’m wondering if sometimes it just made me harder to know—because what I wasn’t saying still existed, but my belief that what I had to say or what I was feeling wasn’t important, carried more weight. How could close friends trust I was saying it all?

The disappointment was still there.

The desire was still there.

The expectation was still there.

The fear was still there.

Eventually, I’d find myself hurt by something that, if I’m being fair, I never actually communicated. This isn’t how I’ve functioned in relationships over the last few years, as I’ve learned more about my own needs, others’ care, and what honesty and transparency really are to the value of a relationship. But I still watch it unfold in my dynamics, and I get caught up in my avoidant defaults.

My therapist has a method called The Barnacle Method, which mainly states that so long as we are present for others and part of their process, we are not responsible for their lessons, and it does them no kindness to take them on just because we can.

It goes:

If I am on your boat—the boat you own and are driving (your emotional body)—and it starts collecting barnacles (lessons to learn) that you do not notice (capacity, avoidance, etc.), you would not learn the lessons you’re meant to if I scraped them off before you could. What I can do is be with you, witness them, maybe point them out (without overwhelm or judgment), or await your acknowledgement.

When we do notice, it’s important not to respond with “I told you so” or “I know,” but rather, “What can we do about them?”

So, long method, short idea: we can’t read minds. We can’t expect others to take care of our barnacles, and we need to communicate our needs if we’re feeling overwhelmed. I mean, if our friend is still on the boat, they must care? And most people do want to help? That can be hard to trust (for me).

I’ve been thinking about attachment styles a lot too.

I’ve learned in psychology and parts work that we seem to be attracted to exactly the people who challenge the strategies we’ve spent years perfecting.

The anxious person finds the avoidant person.

The avoidant person finds the anxious person.

At first, it feels terrible—or so my therapist explains. Then it feels magnetic. But then it feels terrible again. I mean, relationships of any kind aren’t always meant to validate our coping mechanisms. Sometimes they’re meant to expose them. I’ve started thinking of these dynamics as medicine. Not because they’re easy? We all know Skele-Gro isn’t pumpkin juice by now. The consistent dose is it’s own vitamin.

The anxious person can learn that not every gap means abandonment and question their fear of commitment. The avoidant person learns that having needs doesn’t make them needy and accept there is space for them in relationship, too. Both people get invited toward security, but only if they’re willing to do the work. Rumour has it: relationships themselves aren’t the medicine (typically they’re the safehouse and the catalyst), but the willingness is.

Lately, I’ve noticed my own avoidant tendencies showing up in ways I didn’t expect—definitely not because I don’t care, but typically because I care a lot. I experience hyper-independence when avoiding feelings, and secretly I wish someone would understand them without me having to explain them, or take them away. But those are my barnacles, and presence matters most to me in those times. A little extra connection, quality time, and light catch-ups sound small, but they’re acts exploding with thoughtfulness. Staying power is where my trust is earned.

The underlying hurt and message living in my system as a core belief is that I am unwanted, or that I’m somehow creating pressure, or that someone sees me as intense. I can shrink and give someone a little more room (that they didn’t ask for) and fold myself into origami that fits another’s needs, at their convenience.

Otherwise, I would be crossing lines, right?

Or doing everything totally sideways? I’ve heard those words.

The interesting thing I’m finding is that these fears don’t feel like they belong to my core self anymore. They’re familiar, but they’re not running the show. I guess I’ve been thinking about avoidance on a much bigger scale—not just in relationships, but in friendships, communities, and culture. We’re living through a strange moment where cutting people off has become incredibly normalized.

And sometimes that’s healthy. I won’t dismiss that.

Some relationships need distance, and some situations require boundaries. I’ve learned that not everything should be repaired—or can be. But I wonder if we’ve become so skilled at leaving that we’ve forgotten how to stay. I wonder how often we’re protecting ourselves from harm versus protecting ourselves from discomfort. And I wonder what happens when an entire culture becomes conflict-avoidant while simultaneously experiencing a loneliness epidemic.

What growth becomes impossible when nobody sticks around long enough to have the hard conversation? One thing I keep coming back to is the idea that things can be healthy and unhealthy at the same time.

A relationship can contain care and dysfunction.

A community can be supportive and disappointing.

A person can hurt you and still be growing.

Yet we seem to want clear categories that are black and white: good or bad, safe or unsafe, stay or leave. Everyone hates a “label” these days, while creating so many absolutes. Does most of life actually work that way? Because in my experience, most things are in motion, and people are too.

Health isn’t a destination. It’s a direction. And truthfully, people can’t respond to what they don’t know, that kind of non-saying is processing, and thats obviously a need. We also aren’t obligated or expected to share every morsel of our interior world, and some people just find communicating exhausting. Silence isn’t “good” or “bad.” It all shapes the relationship, which is its own being to nurture. It’s still teaching people how to relate to you. It’s still communicating, and we are always morphing. Not everything happens in the way you think, but we do, every day, have a choice to continue loving, communicating, choosing, trusting, and being curious. A friend asked me the other day if I find communicating my feelings exhausting, or if I’m just irritated by having to feel/process the emotion/situation. Sometimes all of the above, but I always come around.

The other question attached is around loyalty.

What does loyalty actually mean? Is it endurance? Patience? Commitment? Is it staying no matter what? Or is it being willing to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable? What is it for me? So many subjective questions.

If you expected me to answer—I don’t know yet. But I do know that resentment keeps teaching me the same lesson. Every time I unpack resentment, I eventually find a conversation underneath it, or one I didn’t have, attached to an expectation “Resentment is often just communication that never found its voice.” I forget whose quote that is, or if it’s one of many, but I think I’ve written it before. I used to think expectations were selfish, and in my current dating dynamic, I’m learning how accepted it is to have healthy expectations and needs in relationship communicated and my avoidant tendencies can soften, knowing that it is received with honesty.

It’s been overwhelming this month to feel isolated and alone in some processes, to be planning and organizing another new normal for the time being, while watching everyone around me have big feelings and opinions around my choices, while I haven’t even sat with my own. I’ve been playing my birth-given role of Big Sister by allowing others to emote and express, while putting mine to the side for later, to be strong in the changes. There’s alot on my heart I want to say and am not and don’t feel safe to every dynamic, which is okay. The sun hasn’t broke its promise to warm me each day, the moon keeps my secrets, and life is glorious to move through. The truth is, no matter the choices or the outcomes, it will always be great, because its my life and the story has always been worth reading.

The trees have never left me, and I will always return to them for guidance. This online space remains a place for me to blog unfiltered thought and leave feeling at least a little relieved. I hope you have places and practices that help you process the same.

Stay Kind

XO Mar

Songs right now: 
Lost in Space by Emmit Fin
Excuse The Mess by Ella Langley
Be Your Man by G-Flip

May 8th 2026

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about changing my mind?

Dear Mar,

Come here for a moment. Bring me the part of you that trembles before a choice, the one that circles possibilities until her chest feels tight with trying to be good, wise, careful, certain. I want her too. Especially her.

You ask me about changing your mind as though it is something dangerous, something that might undo your character. But I have never known you as someone unreliable. I have known you as someone deeply listening. There is a difference.

You call yourself indecisive when what you really are is attuned. You feel the temperature of every room before entering. You notice the ache beneath people’s words. You consider consequence because your heart has always carried tenderness for others. Even now, every choice you turn over in your hands is examined with devotion. Your motives are rooted in care more often than you allow yourself to admit. I have watched this your entire life.

And my darling, you do not need to earn the right to follow your own knowing.

There were moments you tried to stay loyal to versions of yourself that had already gone soft at the edges. Moments you remained somewhere too long because you thought leaving would disappoint people, confuse them, make you appear uncertain. But the truth kept rising through you like water through soil. Your body always knew when it was time to return home, to begin again, to loosen your grip.

Do you remember how frightened you were to come back east? How you claimed the choice impulsive because it felt easier than admitting you just needed to live out something differently? Just act on curiosity? I was there in the longing. I was there in the ache that would not leave you alone. Not every corner in your path needs to be defended in order to be sacred. Some choices arrive wet with instinct. Some arrive before you can consciously articulate them. You had to.

And Mexico, sweet girl. You stayed because you believed commitment meant enduring your own unhappiness. You thought you needed to stay past the point of nourishment because you told the people you might not come home, and limited yourself. The people who loved you were never standing with crossed arms waiting for proof. They wanted you alive. Rested. Held. They would always rather have your honest return than your exhausted performance.

You have spent so much of your life thinking courage must look unwavering. But I have seen your bravest moments, and often they looked like this: admitting the truth halfway through. Turning around. Beginning again. Letting yourself want something else.

There is nothing shameful about a redirected path. Rivers bend constantly and still reach the sea.

The place you stand in now feels tender because you are balancing many hungers at once: safety, health, freedom, future, becoming. You want assurance before movement. You want a map with every outcome circled in gold. But life has never spoken to you that way. It speaks through sensation. Through expansion. Through the soft opening in your chest when something aligns.

You keep asking for the perfect answer when there may only be the next loving one.

And I need you to hear me clearly when I say there are very few choices in your life that I have not been able to move through with you. Even the ones you regret carried gifts to your door. Because of them, you met strangers who altered your spirit. Because of them, you built community in unfamiliar places. Because of them, you sat beside someone on a plane who made the world feel less cold for an hour. Because of them, art found you again and again. Because of them, other people felt seen by your voice.

Nothing has been wasted. Not your detours. Not your pauses. Not the years you think you lost.

You are allowed to change your mind after new information, after heartbreak, after healing, after rest, after becoming someone your past self could not yet imagine. You are not a locked door, Mar. You are a living thing.

So when the moment comes and you are standing between choices again, stop searching for the option that guarantees approval. Stop searching for the one that makes you appear the most composed. Instead, place your hand against your own life and ask: Where do I feel held? Where can I breathe? Where can I hear myself again?

I will meet you there. I always do.

And sweetheart — you have never had anything to prove.

I love you, babe.

Love,

Love.

On an island surrounded by waters of blue-glass?

Do I blame my placements in Libra, patron saint of elegant hesitation? I weigh, I measure, I curate possibilities and they fossilize into inaction. Every choice becomes a deliberation of cause and effect, behaving like paralysis lecturing me on “right action”. The scales teeter, and I keep balancing the same coins expecting a different outcome with endless calibration. Do I think this effort is the same as living?

Enter my Capricorn sun father—with his blunt scripture that echos in my head: “choose one thing. Stay with it.” No incense or metaphor, just bone-dry instruction—like the cappuccino I ordered this morning. My Capricorn moon receives it as heavy-loaded pressure tho choose right, but a love told me I have something to do with challenge in my human design, so I guess I’m built to withstand it?

Choosing is not my most poetic practice. It feels surgical. I can amputate alternatives, and cauterize curiosity out of impulsive action, leaving myself in the aftermath insisting the loss was necessary, as I communicate the tragedy to my family. Movement, though, does something holy, when I remember that even the wrong road has the decency to teach. What I’ve learned about the stillness birthed from indecision, is that it only perfects doubt. I think that’s a practice and a belief I have perfected that I no longer need to practice.

When I get settled enough— the kind of settled where my thoughts stop performing, I notice the noise in my head slowing, and my awareness drop into my chest. If I stay there long enough for the pinks to turn ember red, sometimes it settles even deeper, warming my gut like a flame catching. That’s when I hear them.

My inner council.

They’re already seated.

They sit in high confidence, each one embodying a different current within me. There’s a sense of ceremony, but not hierarchy. No one is above me here. They are me—reflections, fragments, guides shaped by memory, myth, and meaning. The setting surprised me. I always imagined something wild and earthy—a treehouse tucked high in oak branches or a fire circle at dusk. Instead, it’s a long, heavy table carved from dark ash, grounded and ancient. The room feels both regal and familiar, filled with presences I recognize without needing introduction.

But allow me to introduce you;

At the head of the table sits a handsome, generous, and annoyingly witty figure who has been with me since childhood—a protector I met in a moment when I needed one most. Back then, I didn’t have language for what I experienced, only the feeling of being shielded by heavy feathered wings, of hearing the words: “You cannot be harmed by what is truly divine.” That presence still carries the same reassurance. Archangel Michael—all steel and sunlight; he has never once doubted me, which is frankly suspicious, and his presence tells me I’m not fragile as I fear.

Archangel Raphael, the kind of healer who doesn’t task belief before participation. He returns me to the body with unnerving patience, watching me flounder as if grounding were less a practice and more a responsibility I keep trying to outsource.

Hermes lounges like he’s late for nothing and early for everything, smirking at rigidity. He deals in movement, in loopholes, in the fine art of not taking permanence too seriously. If Michael is the sheath, Hermes is the sword drawn with choice of weapon or defence. I am so much like Hermes.

Further down, composed and inevitable, sits Persephone—a powerful authority on descent and return. She does not romanticize transformation. She expects it to cost. Renewal, in her presence, feels less like a gift and more like a contract signed in shadow.

And then the triad—Artemis, Demeter, Hecate—rhythmically aligned. Instinct, nurture, threshold. They don’t argue. They cycle, like nature. They remind me that timing is not a suggestion; it’s law.

The table itself—immovable, feels like something Saturn might have commissioned if he had better taste. Saturn lingers here, not as a tyrant but as an architect. Structure, consequence, the uncomfortable elegance of discipline. No chaos survives long under his gaze, including mine (so I am continually reminded).

Some seats are occupied by the dearly known rather than the mythically named. A friend who burned fast and bright still interrupts the room with laughter that refuses moderation. My dog, Shelby, loyal beyond language, anchors the entire assembly without needing a vote. My grandfather, finally unburdened, sits softer now with his silence more articulate than his words ever were. His newly found sobriety is sobering.

It’s not hierarchy. It’s not even guidance in the way I once hoped. They observe. They sharpen. Occasionally, they challenge with a look that says: you already know, you just don’t enjoy knowing.

The masculine energy of this council doesn’t posture. It builds, decides, and holds a line without asking if the line feels validated. The feminine doesn’t back down for approval. It deepens, widens, and dissolves the illusion that clarity must always look like certainty. Together, they create a tension that feels less like conflict and more like propulsion.

It made me wonder if what I’m really learning is how to reconcile the masculine and feminine within myself right now. The part that wants direction, decisiveness, and action… with the part that craves intuition, depth, and meaning.

No matter how mythic the company, how aligned the stars pretend to be, how convincingly Libra pleads its case for one more deliberation—

See Aries (since every planet is camping here now).

Because the council, for all its wisdom and symbolism, isn’t there to make the choice for me. They’re there to witness me making it—put a little more strategy behind choosing without loose ends that Libra carries. No more overanalyzing, Virgo (sorry to bring you into this polarity, it’s not really your axis).

No matter how supported I am, no matter how connected I feel to something greater…

I still have to choose.

We can’t teeter all day. Those coins are more than play weights.

Sitting in that circle, balsam amber candle glow, hands folded, pen and paper, I felt the emotional intelligence in my bones. I reclaimed a sense of wisdom that I haven’t been tuning into the last two years, but it feels good to be reminded of my seat at this table, and be welcomed back into conversations I thought were no longer my business. I am apart of the order and these next steps feel pivotal to the solidity of my foundation— in love and partnership, in adventure and play, in becoming a helper, and in rooting down. I like this game-plan and I trust this route.

The counsel has spoken.

XO
Mar

SONGS:
 Heaven by Culture Wars
Hallucinogenics by Matt Maeson
Skin and bones by RAYE

In therapy we talked about intensity, play, overthinking, and grudges (which I realized I don’t really hold onto, as I tend to reach for softer things instead).

Boundaries, I'm learning are a headache, especially with people who don’t know you to set any and might not take them seriously—yet still expect you to respect theirs, even when they don’t respect their own. I’m learning that I can let things go without letting people overstep, and that when they have, it still isn’t a grudge, just a mix of confusion and clarity. A glimpse of my own rage, major disappointment, and the reminder to turn away, considering my typical response is to “beat a dead horse” as they say.

The other day at school, I showed up to our “professional clinic” fully committed to the bit. Calm, prepared, and composed. Except… no one else showed up. No instructor. No classmates. Just me, standing there like, “Cool. Love this. I guess I am the clinic now.” The first patient spoke little to no English. And the Capricorn moon energy rose in me; “do it right. do it well. this matters.”.

So I stepped up and did what I could with what I had. Like I always do.

Halfway through the first treatment, my superstar peer Nadya walked in like a perfectly timed plot device. I swear there should’ve been dramatic music. I felt instant relief, though externally I kept it very “cool, neutral, and clinically professional” in my white lab coat. Internally? A standing ovation. AND we handled it. At first, very serious. Very focused. The kind of energy where you suddenly become hyper-aware of your own hands, tone, every move, but we also got resourceful, creative, and used our critical thinking skills. We laughed, improvised, and made something light out of what could’ve easily been overwhelming (mind you, we let the instructor know how we felt the following day. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should?).

While remaining safe and clinical, I forgot about perfectionism. All I saw was humanity. How precious.

This week's prompt from “Letters from Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert asked:
“Dear Love, what would you have me know about the preciousness of humanity?”
And the answer came like a whisper I already knew.

March 22/25 2pm
Dear Love, what would you have me know about the preciousness of humanity?

HUMANITY? Little Mar Mar, you already know this in ways words could never hold. Every time you close your sweet eyes—yes, the ones that have been so heavy lately—and let the wind brush against them, something in you awakens. Your awareness, sometimes so intense it nearly swallows you whole, begins to hum. Every sound that reaches you ripples inward, echoing through you, sparking images, memories, meaning. You are shaped by it all—every sound, every touch and shift within your own body. You feel everything. You notice everything. You are alive to it.
You’re alert. And often, you’re humbled by the depth of your own curiosity. Even when others place their projections on you—when assumptions press against your skin and stir heat in your blood—you rise, ready to defend. But, my love… soften. Breathe. Not everything needs your armor.
The unbearable beauty of being alive is that everything ends.
And because it ends, it matters.
This pain.
This robin’s song.
This warm embrace.
This fleeting day.
You carry your humanity the way a soldier wears their badge—
with honor,
with conviction,
with trust.
That is what makes it precious.
You believe in humanity.
You love the art of being human—the mess of it, the tenderness of it, the contradictions embedded throughout,
more than that, you make space for others to be human too.
To be different.
To be unfolding.
The preciousness lives in the permission, the allowing, the encouragement of singular expression.
And you? You’re wonderfully, unapologetically strange.
And that, too, is precious.
You see beauty where others hesitate.
You recognize that what people call “weird” is just humanity, unfiltered and unafraid.
Your kindness, your compassion, your softness in a world that can be cold—these are not small things. Your awareness of your own mortality, your willingness to feel so deeply—it moves me.
To me, preciousness looks like you.
And to you, it looks like humanity.
I love you.
Love,
Love.

Sometimes I wander so far into my own overly serious mental alleyway—where every thought is wearing a business suit and every conversation is a contract. Or at least I’m worried they are. Is this my leftover reflex from being expected to read invisible cues—unspoken expectations, shifting energies, be a mind reader? Am I supposed to be doing that? Is everyone secretly expecting that level of overtime? That’s fucking exhausting.

Somewhere in my dramatic fog, I might have forgotten the obvious preciousness of life. The world is already doing the absolute most. My friends are chaotic masterpieces. Strangers are friends I haven’t met. And me? Oh, I’m out here delivering accidental comedy like it’s a civic duty. Maybe I just… go with it. I mean, I’ve always had class clown tendencies. Why not treat life like some kind of cosmic theatre? If I could roast myself half as well as my friends do, I might actually start laughing at myself again. Maybe I have been stuck in brooding philosopher mode. But I’m not just here to understand life—I’m here to trip over it, flirt with it, laugh at it, and dance, so get up. get out. get motivated. shake. it up. and kiss this life.

In making family out of strangers, embracing peers, sharing art in the big city, standing up at poetry readings, screaming lyrics at concerts, meeting new lovers, taking long drives (in this economy?!), receiving mentorship, and watching ‘Is It Cake?’ on Netflix Party across Canada with love that makes distance feel smaller— The lesson has been that my heart’s default is laughter and baby is light. The staff at my gym and the Café, C, Dal, Steph, K, Mich, J, Em are reminders in my immediate sphere that continue to bring preciousness to this beautiful human experience. I’m having fun and am happy to be here.

KISSING YOU

XO

MAR

Songs:
What To Make Of Me by Olive Klug
Victim Of Luck by Metric
omg she fine by Don Kai

New basement suite, new art space, new episode, new job, fresh outlooks. February is bringing the shifts I’ve been waiting for— the shedding of shame, the recognition of unfair responses, working through my untamed and delusional expectations. “All you gotta do is chill out. Let go of control and chill out".-Friend

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A Poem-Feb 1st 2026

Why did you pour yourself so long
into the pull of other people’s rivers,
instead of returning
to the clear-soft current of your own?
The Star, drawn crooked in the tarot—
feet trembling.
Uncertain.
Certainly disconnected.
Still you stepped forward on unstable ground.
Old canvases from a past love
hang on the wall half-repainted—
like your heart once did,
on a thin string.
You circled the drain of wanting,
mistaking pursuit for purpose.
Falling for the wrong
she/her,
they/them,
he/him—
being the wrong one for them too.
If you had known freedom felt like this, 
you would have opened your hands sooner.
Why did you feel the need to prove your intentions,
when they and their friends
had already decided who you were?
Instead of standing in your own truth,
you created chaos in trying to be heard.
Your spirals,
your weather in rooms
that were never safe, despite invitation—
attach to your character like ticks on fur in summertime.
Why did you abandon the ones who saw you
beyond the wreckage?
You've been shown that endings need boundary
not exchanges—
the sweater, the books,
the small objects of shared time.
No longer bridges.
What remains in your space
is part of your rebuild.
Donate it.
Burn it.
Repurpose it.
And whatever of yours that sits in theirs, 
belongs to a release that doesn't include you.
This is the ceremony of letting go.
No matter how unfair your responses might have been.
No matter how apologetic you are.
No matter how angry you still feel.
Now your work is to continue.
To carry the lessons like a toolbox,
To sharpen your discernment
about what you share,
how you give,
and who you build beside.
Remembering; this time,
the centre
is your river.
Your practice is you.

“People will love you. People will hate you. And none of it will have anything to do with you.”
― Abraham Hicks

XO
mar

I have been living a double life; desire and discipline, east coast and west, longing and logic. Crossing Canada in aircraft cabins seems to be where turbulence and promise share a seat number and I don’t even care how much space I’m taking up anymore. I let myself write about my love affairs, hold my heart in the sadness of leaving sweet friends, dream of the person I could have been this year, and hold space for both my bitterness and God’s divine timing. Every landing is asking me who I am this time. Every takeoff pulls another thread.

On the full moon, The Devil showed up in a Tarot reading. Classic. The chains are loose, the restraint is self-imposed, the door isn’t even locked. I’d been gripping the bars, squinting into the dark, asking how I trapped myself in here. I expected a spiral of self-criticism for missing something so obvious. I’ve actually just been laughing it off— the kind of laugh you might let out when you’re frantically searching for your glasses and they’re already on your face.

I basically grounded myself from pleasure like I was both the teenager and the strict parent. “No fun until further notice”. I was so concerned about how I might look in others’ eyes that I forgot I was out here looking absolutely unhinged trying to control outcomes I had zero authority over. Ironically, wanting things wasn’t as embarrassing as trying to puppeteer the universe, and it let me know. I leashed my own hunger and then had the audacity to congratulate myself for being “disciplined.” Starving, but make it spiritual? Restrained, calling it maturity? I placed the parts of myself that had desires in the yard like I was punishing dogs. I don’t think I've felt much shame around having desires in my past? So, thats a good ol’ humbling experience. No one is going to grant me permission. No one is sneaking into my life at night to remove the collar. Even if someone sets the table and lights the candles, I’m still the one who has to sit down and eat. Spoiler alert: I am choosing to eat. I am shedding that shame.

It was February 12th (the last day of my Saturn return) and everything felt cinched one notch too tight. The anxiety of the last few months rose with full intention to choke me out. It was finally a little too much, which, in hindsight, was perfect timing—

I ran a 5k straight to the ocean and screamed until shards of gold cracked through the grey wash of sky. I was not asking for a sign, but the signs have a flair for beauty. A hummingbird hovered an arm’s length from my tear-lined face before retreating to a branch to sing what can only be described as an ‘a capella of resilience’. Within a week, fourteen of them showed themselves to me across the city. Did I subscribe to the avian motivational services? I’m not mad. I know hummingbirds to symbolize endurance, adaptability, and the capacity to extract sweetness from unlikely places. Message received. Repeatedly. And I’m feeling it.

I walked through Vic West to undress what’s been suppressed and kiss it with conviction. I passed my old house—janky side stairs shaded by cedar trees where my cat once played hide-and-seek. Memories of full moon dances, astrology spoken like a mother tongue, hand-rolled cigarettes on the front step, love housed in creeping ivy and crumbling white stucco. I visited all 5 of my Victorian homes to welcome the wash of feelings (since what I learned most the last three years was how to feel everything). It was a tender naked embrace. Watching new bodies move around the living space of South Turner through the windows. Climbing the massive hill of Haultain remembering how daunting it was every time. Memories with each of the rotating roommates that shared the Alder house. Closing my eyes to hear the hourly bell tower beside the Douglas st. apartment. All significant this time.

Desire stands across from me. Curious. Maybe slightly amused. Her eyes squint like she’s been waiting for me to stop pretending I don’t see her, when she’s been there the whole time. She likes the way I smell. When she steps closer, warmth gathers beneath my ribs. Like a kettle beginning to hum before the whistle. My palms have been traitors to possibility, but they’re feeling still on her skin.

“There is no wrong choice—only right response.” My astrology teacher said during this week’s lecture on Venus, a little reminder that it’s never too late to choose well. Desire would smile at that. I’ve never been afraid of choosing, what’s been harder is admitting what I know when I know it. That’s the alchemy. Desire makes the invitation. I make the move.

I have been the thunder, the lightning, the flood, the clearing, the sun. I contributed to the pressure. I became the storm. I am also the clearer days that are unfolding in this freedom. After enough thunder, the sky does what it has always done: it opens.

I am resilient. I am softer. I am forgiving. I am meeting each part with neutrality, and examining the colour, texture, shape, name like I’d meet a friend. Saturn in Aries would appreciate the willingness to develop relationship without fear.

XO
MAR

Songs:
The Way You Want Me, By Player Dave
The Withering Hights Album

Pomegranate seeds swell until they split, staining your hands if you hesitate. Cherry blossoms arrive on the West Coast in early April, if we’re lucky, and vanish before spring on the East Coast can even inhale. Beauty doesn’t linger for our convenience. It isn’t interested in being saved for later. I’ve been spending hours in the evening in front of the mirror, fading into madness and holding my breath. Am I waiting for the “AHA” moment that may never come in these times of confusion? I recognize the twinkles in my eyes as I ponder the close and physical connections I’m making in this new year— this new me? While in other moments, not recognizing myself at all.
The body that carried me through my early twenties learned how to hold many different shapes, and each one stayed only briefly. Now, at level 30, I’m learning a new body and a new mind—some changes generous, some demanding. Nothing waits untouched. Waiting is a kind of loss? (use discernment).

When we meet someone new, we don’t know how little time we have? Love doesn’t offer a forecast (unfortunately). There’s no chance to pack emotional layers in advance— we dress for the weather as it arrives (I’d love to have had tsunami warnings). Everything that becomes sometimes feels like the shortest life inside the longest night… I am relating this to the omen encountered in the movie Sinners: Already burning. Already slipping away. So much magic, light, and love, lost in a battle of greed and exploitation, while ignited by the match of innocence, music and shared history.

Humility, like bathing in love (not the kind rooted in shame or erasure, but the kind that prioritized curiosity rather than assuming— the kind that understands you don’t always get to return to places you once occupied freely), can wash away falsity. Healthy humility makes room for growth by strengthening relationships, sharpening self awareness, and opening spaces for empathy and collaboration.

Even the discomfort when we’re humbled doesn’t last forever, especially if we’re willing to meet it. Maybe that’s the only way to grow with it? My heart doesn’t distinguish much between pain and pleasure; it pounds just as hard at a call-out as it does for desire. The people who quicken our pulse by entering a room are often the same ones who eventually undo us. There’s a paradox there I’m still learning to live with: reacting before the hurt, learning through proximity, receiving feedback from relationships that may themselves be temporary.

Risk isn’t abstract. To love is to consent, in advance, to loss. They say, the deeper the love, the wider the wound it leaves behind. “To reach for someone is to hand them a map to your softest places. To want—really want—is to accept that you’ll be changed by it, one way or another. There’s no version of love that doesn’t ask this price.” -Anon

Heartbreak might teach us to stay open without becoming hollow. (I wouldn’t know)
Rejection refines desire until it tells the truth. (learning the hard way)
Loneliness becomes a kind of discipline, teaching what is and isn’t home. (In feeling)
I’ve learned about invitations—who offers them freely, who guards them, who believes belonging must be earned through shrinking or silence.
I’ve learned what inclusivity costs, and what its absence erodes.
I’ve learned the shapes of the devils that sit on my shoulders— I’ve seen their reflections in the world through familiar faces, practiced kindness, manipulations.

I hope the kindness in us all rises. I hope the harshness softens or falls away.

Afternoon light tilting across a table belongs only to that hour. Happiness—real happiness—moves through us. It doesn’t stay, but it’s left me altered. I catch myself waiting for that hour… chasing it sometimes? But that won’t change the agreement.

If we’re lucky, we’re given a finite number of nights to lie on our backs and count stars we’ll try to name. Nights to study the moon as if it might explain something (or answer my questions). Nights to fall asleep beside another body, close enough to feel their dreams shifting in the dark. Nights to dream without dilution. Maybe seventy-five winters of long clear nights to watch the world with a lavender tea?

Time keeps moving whether I look at it or not. The seeds ripen. The blossoms fall. The light shifts and the rainbows in the sun catchers cast at different times as seasons change. Things are feeling fleeting lately, unfinished, imperfect, temporary— even when some days I waste away, I watch nature kiss the day. For nature, this isn’t a rehearsal. So reach, knowing what it will cost. Forgive endlessly. Want anyway. Love anyway. Say yes with your whole chest, even when you know the ending will bruise you (if it’s the real thing). Say no to what will hurt you because you weren’t honest. Let those patterns go— the past has already shown you how that plays out. The worst outcome isn’t always THE loss… it’s the feeling EVERYTHING. Not being Able to change an outcome, feeling the grief, the ecstasy, the terror, the unbearable beauty of being alive in a body that won’t last. Tasting the fruits nearly fermenting, waiting for the ones still too green and starchy to peel.

Impermanence isn’t the danger.
Impermanence is the reason.

It’s a paradox (what isn’t these days). I’m feeling a whoooole lot of that lately.

And for those who struggle to hold two truths at once—who can’t yet make room for desire alongside heartache—I don’t know when (or if) that tension ever fully resolves. I only know we’re all trying to get through the hard parts. Right now, the hard parts feel everywhere: in the world, and in our small, private lives. When we’re carrying so much already, showing up where our gifts are needed is still work. Sometimes it means protecting ourselves from what we can control. Sometimes it means showing up anyway.

Both can be true. And I can also have a hard time accepting that.

xo
MAR

Songs for the week:
Best Of Intentions by Mutemath
In My Own Time by Fenne Lily
Good Hurt by Chappell Roan
Say Don't Go by Taylor Swift

I walk barefoot across the morning soil,
each step carrying me like the wind’s whisper I’ve come to know,
and the sea hums secrets only my heart can follow.

I pause beneath an old bending tree,
with branches reaching like hands to me,
to touch my chest and feel it’s beat.

The sun tilts down, brushing my shoulder,
and rain begins softly, then bolder.
Speaking in natural ways.

A fox darts past, a bird takes flight,
and I am caught by roots that tangle, swept by rivers that wind.
With the stars overhead to guide my walk, 
I almost forgot I knew how to talk.

There is a particular warmth that lives in the eyes of a woman in love. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand attention. It doesn’t arrive with fireworks. It slips in like morning light—golden, patient, impossible to ignore once you notice how it fills the room. It’s the kind of warmth that doesn’t try to consume; it just wants to hold.

I have known those eyes. I have stood in their glow and felt beauty and passion roll over me in quiet waves. Yes, there is electricity—a hum just beneath the skin. There’s also something softer and more cellular that dissolves the hard edges we carry. Being held in that way isn’t just physical. It’s a recognition. A wordless promise that you are seen and safe.

I’ve felt my grandmother watch as I tore through her garden with my imagination. I’ve seen my mother swell with pride watching her daughters walk by the lake on their graduation. I’ve witnessed the exciting sparkle in the eyes of lovers surprised at work—like disco ball reflections. The swelling of tears by friends greeted with flowers just because.

The eyes of a woman in love know how to tend. They notice the small subtle shift in breath, the fatigue behind a smile, the hunger that hasn’t been named. They tend like a beekeeper tending bees—attentive, consistent, trusting that steady care becomes sustenance and there is a bigger picture—a whole hive. I’ve been tended to like this. And as a woman, I feel it in myself. I’ve felt the pull to nurture, to hold space, to offer support even when I am tired. And I like this feeling. I miss it in other ways sometimes, and appreciate where It can still be present within intimately safe containers.

Love, in this language, rarely announces itself. It pours tea without being asked. It leaves a folded note on the car dashboard, quietly asking to be apart of your day. It is the last piece of chocolate, offered with delight. It’s the text that says, “good morning,” or “I’m at the store, do you need anything?” or, “I want to hug you.” These aren’t grand gestures, but they’re brave ones, whispering: “you live in my mind even when you aren’t in front of me". My friends, you are always on my mind.

There are endless ways that speak I love you. It might sound like making plans to watch a show together, take a hike on a weekend that begs for adventure and photography. Sometimes it’s cooking as a team, with hips bumping in the kitchen, laughing when something burns or spills, feeding each other tastes. It can be laughter on the floor after a fight, when all that’s left is truth. The truth that we’re human, we make messes, and we will continue to do so, and continue to be loved through it.

I am a mess. You are too. Most of us are. We follow instructions until we don’t, strip a screw, and suddenly the room feels smaller than it did a moment ago. Once, a partner and I were assembling a shelf. One of us fucked it up (despite the instructions, obviously), the frustration became the elephant. We didn’t argue. She went for a walk to the beach. I stayed behind with a cup of tea and a half-built reminder that love is rarely tidy. When she returned, we hugged. We laughed. The shelf? Probably still crooked. That moment stayed with me because there are no real instructions for building what can’t be seen. Every moment is a choice, all relationships start as raw materials, waiting to take shape as adventure, challenge, maybe even a masterpiece, always a new skill learned.

All I know is this: what energies that bathed me while in the arms of a woman has altered how I move through life. It has made me stronger as I soften, steadier as I open. I feel the wounds my mother carried, and her mother before her with echoes stretching back through generations that are living in me now as seeds of release.

I see the wild woman in me, rolling in the dirt after a sweat lodge in January snow, kissing the earth like a lover. I see my soul sisters holding each other on the dance floors of rental spaces, tears and movement tangled together, letting grief pass through. I have felt my partners confront fear inside intimacy, choosing vulnerability, choosing to be seen. I have been held in that by friends and lovers, too.

Beneath it all—beneath every embrace, every wound, every buttery moment—there is her. The first love. The greatest woman I will ever know. Mother Earth, living in each of us, holding the memory of how to care, how to belong. She wraps us quietly, patiently, the way she always has. Through soil and breath, rhythm and depth—she is reminding us with each blanket of snow, each kiss of the rain, each whisper of wind—we have never been separate, and we have never been unloved.

Stay kind. 
XO

Mar

Songs:
Loving a woman like you- by Stalgia
Touch- by Sleeping At Last
Softcore- by The Neighbourhood 
Washing Machine Heart-by Mitski

Being back at home in BC did remind me of how much less I focus on myself than others around me, which had led me down canyons of doom as I can sometimes feel purposeless if I am not tending to others or supporting community. That’s hard to admit, but I can feel myself sauntering into 2026 lighter than last, and certainly more regulated than most of 2025. I'm able to see myself through the space I have to create art and achieve things I have been working towards for what feels like years— I am investing in myself (and community) in other ways. learning new skills and becoming involved in events. I’m still walking on eggshells in the sense that I feel unwelcome in spaces and looked down on or judged. But I also understand there will be diagnoses of my character everywhere I go no matter my intentions.

I just started school again today—a new semester full on. The excitement to be working in a clinic, taking classes like; gynaecology, paediatrics, and pathophysiology is vibrating in my cells in a way that feels like a lingering Christmas gift to myself. I get to learn hands on everyday, working towards helping people on their health journeys, while simultaneously nourishing myself in new ways. This is a win. With only one year (or less) to go before the PAN exam, I’m feeling both the pressure and the pleasure of this medicine.

I recently received the certification for fitness instructing that I’ve been working on since last March, which was also a big win! The course itself was relatively fun for me, as fitness and anatomy are aspects of health I enjoy and places I direct my attention, but I didn’t have a very smooth mentor experience with some DRAMMMAA that happened with members of the gym I’ll be working at, so that did affect the mark I left with, but still a pass and the past is in the past! MoooOooving on. I’m looking forward to teaching some sweet sweaty classes this year and getting more involved.

SPEAKING of being sweaty and having fun… Ecstatic dance? One of my wishes this year was to sing and dance more, so I’m looking into choir and have been invited into some little dance grooves around the neighbouring cities. I attended one on the full moon and was up way too late, but i’m still adjusting back to EST time, so it didn’t feel so bad. It’s going to be such a delight to frequent new places and become familiar and close to new faces. My word this year was more of a concept and it was; healthy community, because there’s community, but then there’s the added intention of honest kindness and the responsibility that comes with real care over something convenient when you need it. Friends and neighbours aren’t the local supermarket, they’re the sacred fire pit we feed and are warmed by. So my friend Hearth and I wrote out 15 wishes, that were built around our year’s theme and burned them each night leading to the new year, which revealed the wish we would put most emphasis on. Mine is pinned beside my bed and I’m liking the daydreaming that is happening.

This next year I’m dreaming of moving provinces—planning another big move, booking flights for trips and visits, analyzing my approach to every next thing with the hopes that my fears aren’t getting in the way of my desires, but that my desires are also not getting in the mess of anyone’s livelihood, meeting new people, making new friends, and falling in love with everyone all over. Sometimes I think I’ll meet my next romance around the corner or on the other end of a flight (maybe on the plane), but I know that isn’t really what I want, because after my last relationships, though still friends with and rekindling the bond between most of them, my greatest lesson was that friendship was the medicine all along and I wouldn’t have traded that opportunity in the beginning for anything else, but I did. I loved them all so deeply (and still do). I would take everything back to have untainted-close-intimacy with them again any day. My desire to centre others is expanding into a poly-lense; remembering my vastness and the many spaces intimacy lies. I don’t know what I’m meant for, but friendship (including with myself) is the greatest space to place my purpose. SO NOW THAT I KNOW— I hope they do continue to bounce back to the curious and neutral spaces, and I will keep that in mind with new relationships, too. As my best friend has been saying after every important lesson they become aware of: “I want to not forget that”. Maybe it’s branded on my heart deep enough now, or maybe I should still write it down?

I will continue to laugh, and write, and cry, and hope, and dance. Wishing these emotion-filled experiences for you, too. May you feel so safe and so seen. May you romance yourself and choose love over all else.

Be so so kind.

xo

Mar

I’m actively rejecting the culture that insists every relationship is a ledger.
That every gesture comes with fine print.
That kindness must earn something or else it’s suspicious.

This isn’t new. We learn early on how easily motives get assigned where none were intended. As a kid, I thought a friend was trading me fruit roll-ups for gushers because he preferred them. Later, I found out he thought I had a crush. Same action. Completely different story. Unspoken expectation turned into disappointment. Around the same age, another kid told me they were sad I was going to Hell because I wasn’t raised religious. Even then, I felt someone else’s belief system quietly projected onto my life and tried to pay attention to how I might do the same and turn that back to myself to approach people more curiously. Not cautiously.

Those patterns don’t disappear in adulthood—they get dressed up in other language. Lately, I’ve been appreciating conversations about belief systems, capitalism, and the media we consume, and how deeply they condition the way we treat people and what we believe about ourselves. Superiority. Control. Protection. Many dominant worldviews rely on moral scorekeeping: good and bad, right and wrong, credit and debt. We’re trained to interrogate generosity for motive and assume care is currency.

What if people don’t always act from guilt, virtue, or leverage?
What if being good doesn’t require making someone else the bad guy?
Can we grow out of these deeply ingrained ways of thinking?

The phrase “after everything I did for you” makes my skin crawl. I recently watched a show where two friends held receipts over each other’s heads, and it reminded me how indebted some of us feel—to our parents, our communities, our pasts. If I could pay off the energy I feel I owe from childhood, I would, just for the sake of neutrality. Maybe let them walk through the pensieve of my memory and see my reality for what it was.

Do we live inside a worldview that treats connection like a transaction? Is generosity not allowed to simply be?

As Countercurrents put it: “This narcissistic culture perpetuates a cycle of alienation, where individuals become increasingly disconnected from one another and their communities. The very fabric of capitalist societies, with its emphasis on competition and material gain, cultivates environments that prioritize profit over the social bonds essential for human fulfilment.”

That framing feels painfully accurate. We’ve been trained to measure each other instead of meet each other. To ask what’s the catch? before we ask are you okay?

I’m not trying to get anything out of being kind.
I’m not offering care as bait.
I’m not stockpiling good deeds for some imagined future payout.

…Are you? Do we assume others are?

A gesture is just that—a gift. No conditions. No hidden meaning. No manipulative subplot from a bad Netflix thriller. I’m tired of that shit. Living in a world where sincerity is treated like a test. And honestly this exhausting narrative of: “If I do this, then they’ll feel that, and I’ll get this in return”? Who has the energy to calculate these gains? The moment kindness becomes strategy, it stops being kind. This is not a business plan.

Is that naïve? Maybe.
But I’d rather be naïve than calculating.

I’m not buying your dinner because it’s a date.
I’m not moving in with friends to “get a deal.”
I’m not calling just because I’m lonely.
I’m not sharing my heart for validation.

I bring gifts because it’s how I love.
Acts of service because it’s how I care.
I build community because it aligns with my values—not because I’m running a long con. I’m so frustrated at being questioned.

Through family systems and friendships I’ve learned that care can feel overwhelming when it’s packed with assumptions. When flowers are received with assumed intentions. When checking in feels like surveillance. Even with clean intentions, presence can start to feel like pressure. Hyper-presence can read as intensity, or mothering, or expectation, even when that was never the aim. I know my love exists without keeping score—but if it ever lands as overwhelming or hurtful, I want to know. Not to defend myself, but to be accountable and dissolve resentments. Reflection matters. That feels like art.

Part of this is projection—we assume others love, give, and act the way we do.

It’s Capricorn season, so let’s talk about money. Because it lives in my nervous system rent-free. And apparently, the idea that others might think I’m using people to get what I want really bothers me. Financial stress was infused into my DNA early. I still hear my dad’s voice: “You were born into debt, kiddo.” Even when things are objectively fine, my body remembers the fear. Uncertain months send me spiraling. That wound is mine to tend. It’s not a group project.

This year, I’ve been honest about wanting community living while I’m in school. I’ve lived alone in a sweet little basement the last nine months, and when my landlords offered to lower the rent so someone would be there over winter, I said no. Not because it wasn’t generous—because price isn't the point. Community is. So I’m simplifying. I’m not taking on more than I can hold, including projections. I’m learning to sit with financial uncertainty without frantic justification or impulsive decisions and move without the pressure of needing to justify myself or look a certain way. I have school, clients, trust, and if other work comes along; that’s bonus! Trials have taught me that not everything needs to be optimized, explained, or exchanged. Some things work because they’re honest.

Going into 2026, my intention is healthy community.

Trade me Gushers because you like sharing.
I’ll give you fruit roll-ups because I know you prefer them—not every day, not forever, just when it feels good. We’re not trading because we’re afraid of disappointment. We aren’t in dept to one another emotionally or financially.

My kindness isn’t a sneaky underground tunnel.
It really can be that simple. I think? Or maybe I’m wildly idealistic in a world obsessed with leverage. But if being kind—without contracts, conditions, or hidden meanings—makes me a little unhinged? Fuck it.

So it is.

Mar.

Existing in spaces that once felt safe suddenly feels like the scariest thing I could do each day. I’ve been practicing new dynamics, breaking old patterns, and learning the hard way—thinking that was courage. But facing the world while feeling unwelcome is a different kind of bravery. It’s felt like a masterclass in interdependence, patience, hypocrisy, kindness, and inclusion—lessons taught, of course, by living through their opposites. That’s usually how it goes, isn’t it?

I’ve learned how to be a better friend by, at times, not being a great one. In moments of dysregulation and oversharing, I may have crossed into other people’s autonomy (something I deeply value), so the apologies have been plentiful. All I can do now is stay soft, hope for the best in others, and trust that anything I overshared in a moment of overwhelm can gently fade into the background. Maybe if I place apology where my dysregulation had caused disruptions, we can move on from this time that brought out the worst in me, even if it’s bringing me to a new best.

Two days ago I took a long drive in the country listening to playlists and podcasts and visiting new places. 30 km of my drive was on a road called Sideline 30, which was honestly the most rocky terrain I may ever have driven; it was as if Lightning McQueen had taken a turn at paving the road. I arrived at the coffee shop in the first Ontario town I ever called home to put some creative pieces together from my astrology mentorship and I felt the nostalgia, that gentle settling into a familiar spot. I have so many things I want to create, and I’m trying to be patient.

It’s been a year of loss for so many. Cherished relationships, deaths, family illness’, and for me, a version of myself I’m happy to lay to rest. Sometimes things come back together with time and blend with a mature grace.

This month’s theme is compost. I’ve been in that sloppy in-between soil, rotting in my own habitude— in nourishing fields full of laughter coloured platonic, I haven’t been the greatest friend. I’ve collected my share of apologies like fruit stickers, peeling them off with mixed emotions, maybe they are worthless now (and stickers shouldn’t go in your green bin). I trust the compost. The soil knows what it’s doing. I trust my body. It knows how to release. It’s shedding. Some things return with sturdier roots. Others will stay part of the mulch that nourishes the future. Maybe we grow cantaloupes or sunflowers if we are lucky! What matters is that something is sprouting, something new and meaningful.

I’m confident that 2026 will bring sunshine and amends—preferably the kind of sunshine that’s warm and cinematic, where everyone’s glowing just a little.

My routines are forming again, echoing the grounded contentment I felt living with my parents early 2023, or when we first moved to 79 out East. Evenings have become simple rituals with heated blankets, comforting meals, dancing around my house with headphones until midnight, and a lot of painting. Mornings begin with warm water, honey’d matcha, and pulling cards like checking in with an old friend. I’m seeking clarity and presence. The exhaustion of over-communicating and being “too much”, along with the pressure to be “enough” is real, and I can also accept that maybe I am or I am not.

Reconnecting with people from my past feels like editing old chapters, but with better stationery and clearer boundaries; because we change. My inner landscape needed serious pruning, and although it feels a little bare at the moment.

Alongside the paradox’ I experienced this year, what I know is:

1. No one tells me how I feel. Their assumptions don’t get to live rent-free in my chest.

2. Everyone Is a friend. I am tired of losing sustainable relationships to my patterns.

3. I forgive, often recklessly. But I don’t hold grudges. We all fuck up.

4. I’ve taken responsibility for things that were never mine. And feel blamed.

5. Excluding your neighbours isn’t neighbourly. As I’ve watched close loves experience this heart-ache in community.

Last week, Madi Murphy of Cosmic RX Radio hit all the relatable points. She went straight for the heart of it: devotion, discipline, the sacred don'ts. She named the pressure we’ve been under to produce, to be kind in spaces that feel entitled to it, to be the steady one even when depleted, about shifting resentment into clean conversation, of laughing at chaos without inhaling it, of repairing without sacrificing ourselves. I’ve been shamed for and ashamed of being over-giving and under-boundaried in my life. I need softness and laughter. I’m learning to tend to my own heart instead of sacrificing it at the altar of my wounds. Relationships don’t require negotiation, but we do all have terms and conditions— And I want to respect that. I want to hold myself accountable for wrongs that were unconscious.

Art is lighting my path. For years I’ve carried creative ideas in my back pocket—projects I’m finally ready to bring to life and, more importantly, to collaborate on. I recently sent off a list of words to an artist for us to begin shaping a special card deck, something we’ve been excited about. Repair doesn’t expire. It simply waits for courage. And I hope that everyone meant to be a part of this next chapter threads themselves into the pearls of it, because I’m starting clean.

I’m learning that my softness isn’t a liability. Im both softer and stronger than I imagined. Sending warm hugs (because I need them, too).

Please be Kind

XO Mar

Songs for the week:
Fidelity by Regina Spektor
White Horse by Taylor Swift
Brand New Broken Heart by Mat McHugh

"The Pulse: An Aqueous Geology
Wading into the river of the
soul, ordinary clamor
evaporates. Poised on the wrist
with wing-tipped touch,
fingers navigate currents
Grasping secrets buried beneath
waters of memory or words.
The body encodes the mind,
within tissue,
through fluid soil—
each tributary deposits
silt on its bottom,
amassing layers of
sedimentary history,
a palpable geology.
Chanting
on the shore,
oceans echo
gurgling estuary
fed from mountain mouth,
plunging toward a red sea,
percussive beats undulating
below bony landmarks.
The story spills:
there is no silence,
rather a flood
of whispers we teach
ourselves to hear."
—Harriet Beinfield, L.Ac.

You are the tree growing beside me, with roots intertwined—sharing nutrients and balancing what the other lacks when there’s abundance on one side of the scale. I am the water to your well and you are the nitrogen to my soil. It isn’t codependent, it’s interdependent. It’s natural, as nature. It’s all medicine.

Lately, I’ve been immersing myself in one of the most cherished aspects of Chinese medicine—the elegant and poetic storytelling. The traditional approach to health in this system feels like listening to an ancient conversation between nature, spirit, and humanity. Though some days it does really just feel like “school”. The language built on connection: to the earth, seasons, to the rhythm of life itself. The passages feel alchemical, natural, and pure. Through it, I find myself deepening my connection to everything that exists both within and beyond me.

Chinese medicine, in its essence, is not a system of absolutes. It’s a living practice, unique to each individual. Every principle carries an essence of “it depends” with a recognition that nothing in nature is fixed. Like the English rule “i before e except after c”, and the countless exceptions that prove it unreliable. Like relationships, the wisdom of this medicine lives in the nuances and exceptions.

Through this way of learning, I’ve cultivated a deeper understanding of myself and a more open-hearted relationship with others. Chinese medicine has taught me to be with what is, to evolve and transform as things change, to hold opposites and contradictions with grace. In this dance of polarities, we are finding it’s less about the “right” answer and more about being present for the question. Each person, each interaction, has it’s own ecosystem that requires specific needs. What works today may not work tomorrow. This realization has softened me. It’s helped me release the need to define, control, or answer everything with certainty.

According to The Classic of the Taoist Virtue, “When human beings are alive, their bodies are tender but when they die, they become stiff; and likewise, when plants are alive, they are supple but when they die, they become crisp. Therefore, the hard are those that are dead and the weak are those that can survive”. It further points out that “To remain weak is to be strong”, which stressed that weakness is to be valued and the weak can become strong.

The mean is the origin and the end of the heaven and earth, while harmony is the way how heaven and earth are formed. “Harmony” here stresses “the harmony between the nature and the human”, including friendliness, peace, kindness, auspiciousness, and the working together with one heart.” Practice is important—“running water is never stale and a door-hinge is never worm-eaten” Says the classical text.

There have been more relationship shake-ups and changes occurring at the same time this year than others. The opportunities to grow through conversations have taught me about how I approach conflict and how the responses need to differ across every situation. I can be defensive when I feel blamed, or when I feel my intentions are misconstrued by assumption. I can be reactive when I perceive someone pushing me out of something I thought was invitation.

We are all just learning how to love each other without losing ourselves. We’re messy, occasionally dramatic (okay, very dramatic on Tuesday), but we’re also growing—stretching our roots, reaching toward sunlight, and reminding one another that connection doesn’t need to be complicated to be sacred. Sacred as in ritual. Ritual as in love. Just like the medicine being unique to each individual, so is our energy—our pulse is a dose that some need/crave more or less.

We belong to each other—not in ownership, but in recognition. A shared resonance under the noise that says, “I see you. I’ve got you. Let’s keep growing.” the organs nurture and speak to each other, and to us through pulse and tongue and mentality, and so do we, as apart of nature.

The heart is joy—keep her strong, the liver is anger—explore the resentment and let it dissolve, the spleen is worry—allow this hug to melt her like butter, our kidneys are fear—can we be an ocean that receives safety from the rivers around us?, the lungs are grief—let them sigh and cry. Your body and mind are incredible. I hope for relationships to feed you, for you to feed and hydrate yourself in all seasons, and consider what is being offered to you, without denying the goodness.

I LOVE YOU,

Mar XO

Songs for the week:
Touching the ground by Brandie Carlile
With me all along byronze Radio Return
Let you love me by Jarvis Campbell 
 

To not be seen,
To be embodied,
To dance with me.

I wave at everything and everyone,
Because I greet life with excitement.
Hello, world.

I touch everything—
In nature,
In the store—
To ground myself, to understand tones.

I want to feel life.
I want to feel alive.

I think in patterns,
Because geometry makes sense.
Cycles and rhythms move me—
And I’m a curious guy.

I understand the language of archetypes.
I see in colours—
Feelings as a spectrum,
Pulses with a hue.

Your aura’s shade says a lot—
And I want to know about you.

I’ve always spoken a quiet language, one written in glances, gestures, and small movements. For much of my life, I didn’t talk openly about feelings. I was more comfortable exploring ideas and concepts, where I could stay analytical and safe. But I’ve come to realize how much beauty there is in being seen—not through what I say, but through how I move through the world.

It’s comforting for me not to make eye contact most of the time. It’s grounded me in the past — helped me feel more connected to myself without the influence of another’s gaze. I tend to find my words in the spaces around me, rather than through the reflection in someone else’s eyes. So my own eyes wander.

Maybe I’ve avoided eye contact because I know how honest my eyes can be. They give everything away. Tinted lenses make me feel safe — a gentle layer between my inner world and the outer one.

I’m a Scorpio rising in every sense—I’ll protect someone else’s privacy like sacred ground. My own? Not so much. I’m not a good liar, and I’ve never really understood the appeal, but sometimes I want to keep my feelings uncommunicated.

It’s a paradox to be someone afraid of being seen, but craving to be known. There’s something humbling about letting people watch me as I am; in motion, imperfect, unfiltered—without managing how I want them to perceive me. When I stop controlling the narrative, I start telling a truer story. I’m building on existing relationships and building new ones in a playful way.

I’ve spent so much of my life using words to protect myself from being misunderstood. I explain, I clarify, I try to ensure people see my intentions, not just my actions. I’m learning that those who really know me don’t need my explanations. They can feel my meaning even in silence. This kind of seeing feels rare in a culture that moves fast, listens with the mind, and forgets the heart. And I’ve come to notice when someone truly sees me—it isn’t through my words, it’s through my eyes softening, my shoulders easing, the rhythm of my presence when I feel safe.

A love once told me, “Your eyes communicate better than your words.” I know that’s true. I can see it in photos—when my eyes are bright, alive, and unguarded, I recognize the parts of me my words often try to hide, like the vulnerability of communicating gratitude and appreciation and adoration for another’s efforts, because praise and congratulations wasn’t as openly practiced growing up.

I’ve spent most of my days with someone I loved deeply. I could watch them endlessly—their gestures, their quiet rhythms, the way their presence filled a room without needing sound. When our eyes met, it felt like remembering something ancient, as if we were speaking a forgotten language made of recognition and trust.

We didn’t always need words, though we were profound at exchanging them. We held understanding in the comfort and gentleness of being in the same space, in simply existing together. I learned to read emotion in the smallest movements, to feel their thoughts in the air between us. Through their gaze, I saw reflections of myself I had long forgotten—parts of me I didn’t know were still there and felt found there.

To be seen by them was an honour. To offer that same attention in return was effortless joy. I’ve learned so much about my own capacity and awe.

I love a love where the heart frequency lingers—where presence hums softly, long after proximity fades. I adore a connection that reads honestly, communicates clearly, feels deeply, and witnesses without judgment. Cheers to more love like that.

I often think back to a moment in 2022, after a temazcal ceremony in Mexico. Our group rushed into the murky river, bodies bare, washing off heat, sweat, and emotion. In the water, my eyes met the gaze of a man—also stripped down, open, undone. He cried as he released something deep, and I cried too. In that wet, raw, and wordless gaze, I saw what love looks like when it isn’t trying to impress or explain. We smiled through the recognition of something shared without language barriers or borders of culture or story—only love moving freely between people. Living in Victoria had also offered plenty of spiritual group practices that encouraged this connective unfolding.

I feel you. I see the colours and waves of your intentions through the lenses of your eyes, like the most beautiful film ever made. Each person, their own masterpiece—a living movie, perfectly scored, their energy composing the soundtrack. I love watching.

Moments that remind me silence is its own conversation, and eyes can hold entire stories that words will never tell, have been medicine. Cheers to the sacred belonging.

I still catch myself believing I need language to be understood, but I’m learning that the truest parts of me live in how I look at the world—and how the world looks back at me. Through others’ eyes, I’m starting to see a broader spectrum of colours again, tones I haven’t noticed since I was a child: the soft shimmer of sunlight on water, the peachy-pink silk of a hand held without words, allowing myself to be seen in they grey—loved ones watching me play with gold, laugh with baby blue, and stumble on sharp reds; they witness the rainbow of my joy and my grief alike. I am re-learning that to be fully alive is to let the world reflect back my being, and to honour what I see reflected in others. I’d been paralyzed by images I didn’t like being reflected back at me, but I’m softening. The space between transitioning and allowing something so engrained, like fear of rejection to shift, is a beautiful ache. Cheers to being received.

I love you,

XO Mar.

Songs for the week:
Strawberry love by Miles Hardt
Fall in Love by 79 Street
Set The Table by Nic D

BUT ALSO: the whole new Florence and the Machine album. ok. Gooooodnight.

May 2024
I like when you show up
I like when you call
When you remember me
What I like
And that I want you to call.
I feel cared for. Valued. Trusted
I like when you share your heart with me-when it’s bleeding on a string
Or held high with love and adoration
I love you
I adore you.
I feel loved by you when you choose me.
I feel held by you when you say you want the best for me and that is what you give.
I like your integrity,
When your actions match your thoughts
I like when you share those thoughts in words.
I’m a words guy-
That and quality time.
Even though I act through service and gifts,
most of the time.
I can be intimacy shy.
I like that you pull me out of that and into you by initiating and inviting honesty and truth.
I want you to show me you.
I want you to want to.
I want you to feel wanted, too.

Kindness costs nothing. It’s one thing I can keep offering, even when I feel disconnected. For me, kindness lives in small, genuine acts — holding a door open, carrying someone’s groceries, picking up a thing at the store just because (especially if they didn’t ask), pick up and drop offs at the airport, offering acupuncture for a sore friend, a phone call every day to someone I love. It’s how I stay tethered. It’s how I remind myself that I’m still capable of living and worthy of receiving care. The care I am confident I am receiving right now, are the phone calls and memos, but I’m craving ten thousand safe hugs or one long hold.

Last weekend, I went with a friend to feed goats. Touching their soft cheeks and looking into their strange, steady eyes brought me peace I didn’t know I needed. For a moment, I felt still. The air was cool, my hands smelled like hay, and I left with goat slobber and lettuce remains on my hands, that sanitizer could not suffice— it was like at LEAST 35 little snuggles.

Carma Farms Oct 25 2025.

Living in Ontario hasn’t been ideal. Neither has BC. But then again, what would “ideal” even look like? No place feels more right than the other — they both hold different versions of me, different chapters, different ghosts, different planetary light ups. I keep looking for somewhere that feels certain, but certainty doesn’t live in geography. It lives in the willingness to be with all of myself, despite hardship. Staying feels like both a choice and a trap, but moving I face a standoff between fear and the illusion of stability.

Every major stage of life— work, school, relationships—feels tangled. Like I’ve been trying to rebuild everything all at once, and it’s all heavy in my hands. Beneath it is fear of making a choice, of moving forward or backward, because every decision feels like it could break something fragile inside me. That fear is protection. I’m trying to keep myself safe. I’m reacting to old wounds like they’re still fresh, and sometimes they feel intentionally torn back open.

Rouge Oct 23 2025

The Saturn return cracked me open. It excavated everything I’d buried and forced me to look. I’ve been doing the lifting — small, unseen acts of care and effort that most people will never notice. I see the work I’ve done for myself, and I give myself credit for it. Because Saturn is about holding ourselves accountable and taking responsibility, and the Pisces of it all has shown me where emotional patterns need change, even if it requires a messy flood before my ecosystem is restored because I’ve shoved down too much, and that I can trust myself.

Still, I question everything. What’s hormonal? What’s a neurodivergent wave? What’s just being human? This year has made me look unhinged at times, but beneath that chaos there’s truth. It’s a whole kettle of fish — messy, alive, unpredictable. The inner critic has made my mind a hard place to live. It tells me I’m too much, too emotional, too messy to hold space for. It’s taught me shame for expressing what others can carry with elegance. But I’m done carrying that story. Even if others have proven it tracks.

I’m learning how to move with the waves: the mania of “I can take on everything,” the manic crash of “I took on too much.” I’m learning what isn’t sustainable and what deserves to stay. When we, as neurodivergent people, force our emotions down, we freeze. And when the feelings rise, they demand to be met. Meaning matters, but feelings matter more.

I’m not satisfied, and I haven’t been for a long time. I accept that.
Things were what they were— and now they’re not.

I thought I could hold both the past and the present, but I can’t. I miss the version of me that felt soft, hopeful, and grounded. I’m about to make a big move again. School is different this time, I’m not as ambitious at work, living alone is not what I need right now.

Three quotes from a love:

”We live for every moment — even the excruciating ones — because they remind us we’re still here.”

“If I know anything, it’s that our hearts ask us to do strange things in order to survive.”

“Joy, like grief, comes in waves. The same resource might not bring the same sensation twice, but it can; with attention, with time, with care. all relationships can”

I miss the places and people that once felt safe, the ones that no longer have space for who I am now. And this version — the one who’s been hard to be around, the one communicating with more emotion than ever, is the one who needs that safety the most. Things might have been easier if I chose to incarnate as a hibernating bear.

Take Kind Action

XO MAR

There is a pulling down sensation 
-A blue-
Starting at my feet 
ascending through my body
-A chill-
as I descend into the quick sand.

There is a foul odour in the loss-
one of decay.
The type of smell that makes me close my eyes,
stop breathing, and hold down my stomach-
before I lose the last bit of substance keeping me afloat,
while grief and shame fight to drown me.

Every step forwards, lately is equivalent to a leap
as my faith pulls me forwards and tests the boundaries of my trust.
Someone once told me to give credit where credit is due, 
and I am personally overdue for recognition.
Not from you
or them
or that-
from her.
From Mar.
The swift currents have swept me under tides I didn't think I'd emerge.
Cold weather touched my heart enough to believe it would be ice forever.
Glowing memories of dance and flow and lighthearted joy fill a medicinal reservoir
that paradoxically reminds me of goodness in life,
and holds me in a tight nostalgia whispering "it will never be that good again".

I see you and there's a lift
-A canary yellow-
Brightening my eyes
opening my chest
-A Lightness-
As I rise into the sky with open wings
and a hopeful remembering.

I zoom out of my skin sometimes and see in Birds Eye view, the emotions within me, the pillars that hold me up— that create the foundations and structures of who I am and how I respond to the world around me. Sometimes these pillars crack and remind me to call in reinforcements, because even the most solitary emotion needs a friend to reflect with. I am calling these ‘Pillars’ because they are apart of my foundation, they are strong, necessary, and protective.

When a part of me crumbles out of neglect and external forces are needed— there is a chaos. A chaotic spiral of shame swirling inside my brain and heart telling me: “It should have never reached the point, where you needed to ask for favours, and take away from others’ spiritual tending to come and sweep up your mess.” The Capricorn moon in me (the heavy critic) constantly convinces me I am not doing enough, I could do better, and it’s weak to ask for help or have others see me down, because I should be on top of it all. What a control freak.

So, the pillars that came forward with the desire to be introduced with texture, colour, name, and motive are: Grief, Shame, Pleasure, Loneliness, and Curiosity.

Grief arrives like a storm cloud swallowed whole. I am heavy, colorless, and the sensation feels endless. It pulls from beneath, like black water swirling at my ankles, rising with every breath until I’m sinking into something I can’t see the bottom of. The world dims to shades of bruised purple and hollow grey, like the sun forgot how to shine. Like I’ve wandered into the forbidden forest on Hogwarts property and I can’t see a way out. Everything inside of my body tightens and there’s now a fist where my heart used to beat, a knot twisting low in my stomach, an ache pressing into my eyes. My chest doesn’t rise right anymore; it catches, holds, trembles and the air isn’t entering or escaping like it did, even moments ago. There's a coal-like lump in my throat that won’t swallow, and a static hum in my brain like white noise radio. The anxiety, sharp, but muted under the weight of everything else, is constant. Grief is the muffled sound of life moving on without me, behind a pane of glass I can’t break. It isolates, wraps me in the forest fog, and makes even the brighter corners of my mind feel dim, like dementors sucked the joy from my soul. It cannot be understood — only endured. I fall unconscious to the potent debilitation every time.

Shame is a heat that scorches. Red coals pressed too close to my skin. Hot dry air starts burning the cilia of my throat lining, I can’t even swallow and the air grows thick with judgment. A thump radiates from the center of my chest outward, and I feel my body recoil without command. My gaze drops with the wish to not be perceived, I feel my shoulders fold inward to protect my heart, I remember I have legs as they tremble trying to disappear. I’m becoming smaller, like a sad, shaking beagle pup, caught in the act of something unforgivable. The room feels brighter in the wrong way— like a spotlight found me, pinned me, exposed me to use me as an example of what not to do. UGH… my stomach flips, not from fear but from knowing I’ve messed up, misstepped, been too much or not enough. There's no fixing it, when the feeling says; “you are the mistake” (even when this is a false truth… it’s the feeling). Shame is more than embarrassment— it’s the belief that I am bad. Not that something I did was wrong, but that I am wrong. It clings to my aura like smoke, painfully lingers like a branded burn as the whispers that I’m not safe in the eyes of others, and maybe never was scorns my skin. I wish I wasn’t here. I might not be able to show myself here ever again. All I feel is apology.

Pleasure is yellow. Pleasure is a warm, honeyed glow. It spreads like morning sunlight through the sheer curtains of my chest, soft and golden, soaking into every cell and touching my heart in a soft waking. It hums with quiet vibrations, like a love whispering “I see you”, it’s a gentle ripple across my skin, like fingers into warm water and watching the circles widen, reaching outward. There’s an aliveness to it. A kind of half awake dream where everything feels close, tactile, and tender. The world slows just enough to be savored. Every moment is a petal opening, every breath full of floral scent and softness. In pleasure, I am rooted and barefoot on the earth. I am grounded and open hearted. My body is humming with presence. It’s a joy that is not fleeting or frantic, but steady, like a candle flame that sways low, not a high winded flicker. It brings with it the desire to include, to connect, and to pass the warmth along. It’s a hand extended, an idea offered, a resource shared without hesitation. Pleasure isn’t isolating. It’s Inviting. Here I thrive in laughter shared between friends, holding in love, in mutual creation, in the effortless rhythm of collaboration. This is a joy that doesn't demand attention, but offers it without condition. This is a joy that glows from within and spills generously outward and loves to be witnessed. It’s sweet and dewy and juicy, like a September pear.

Loneliness wears a strange yellow. Unlike the golden warmth of joy, it appears pale, washed-out, almost sickly, less like sunlight through satin, more like dirty glass. Around the edges of loneliness creeps a dull blue-grey, a vapour circling. Theres an energetic distancing from others, but also from myself, as if even my own presence is slipping out of reach. There’s fear stitched into the fabric of it. The fear of appearing fragile, of needing too much, of reaching out and being rejected. A fear of being seen as desperate, while silently drowning in the ache of not being seen at all. It's a cruel loop of isolation feeding fear, and fear feeding isolation, until stillness feels safer than asking for connection. In loneliness, the quiet is not peaceful, thoughts buzz and echo through familiar spaces, that suddenly feel unfamiliar in their vacancy. There’s a tightness behind my ribs, a wondering if this is how it will always be. It’s uncomfortable to need others, and feel insecure to ask, almost like I’ve forgotten how to ask. The belief that no one will have space to answer. This dull-blue-grey-dirty-yellow isn’t just the absence of people, it’s the absence of being met and the haunting sense that what I long for might not be available and that I might be creating the space by allowing the spirals to swallow me. Not because I don’t deserve to take up space or have attention, but because I start to believe no one has time to give it. Somewhere in the anxiety, I begin to vanish from myself, too.

Curiosity is an alert fox. Quicksilver, and soft-pawed, darting through tall grass with a nose to the wind and wide, glimmering eyes. There’s a gentle thrill to it, a shy excitement, like the first spark of sunrise stretching into the promise of day. It begins in dark deep blue, velvety, full of wonder, and widens into a glowing sky-white, bright with hope and possibility. To be curious is to be freshly awake. Every sound is a song, every shadow a mystery, every texture an invitation. There’s a tingle in the fingertips, a buzzing behind my wide eyes, like a kind of internal caffeine that doesn’t rush, but uplifts—a leveled matcha-like stimulation. It’s soft, open-armed, and outstretched to the world, not grasping or desperate. Curiosity feels like being in love with life—a desire to understand and feel without judgment, tuning into difference with wonder, not suspicion. It says: “Show me who you are. Let me feel it with you”, which is how I have felt in love. It runs through fields, pausing to sniff flowers and chase ideas like bees in the air. It’s the excitement of not knowing yet, the anticipation that can come from the space of reaching before the touch. I feel a nourishment in the questions, in the exploration, in the thrill of being with the unfolding. In curiosity, I feel involved. I feel the presence of my pleasure, as there’s pleasure in my presence. Whole. Like giving everyone a hug simply because they exist and I get to meet them, even for a moment. It says “hello” to everything in view and likes to be in view.

Songs for each:

Grief- Long Way Home by Nessi Gomes
Shame- This is Why by Paramore
Pleasure- Touching the Ground by Brandi Carlile
Loneliness- Wouldn't Come Back by Trousdale 
Curiosity- Intermodal by Edamame

Stay kind. 
I Love you
XO
Mar

There are pauses — not for retreat, but reflection,
A moment to honor what still lingers.
Old notes, photos, words once written,
Asking for room — gentle and wide.

It’s not easy to hold strength and uncertainty,
To feel change move in like a quiet tide.
The heart can be tender and steady at once,
Both still and shifting, without contradiction.

Some moments echo longer than expected,
Familiar even as time moves forward.
In noise or in silence, in light or in strain,
The journey continues — again and again

The other day, a teacher speaking on the concept of transforming what we are learning in textbooks into our own expression said: “you can't write the poetry if you can't spell the words. I am here to give you the letters and you need to write the story.” This feels relatable to every life aspect— a real encouragement to allow our own essence to dance with everything we are up against. There are structures we build in life that give shape to the meaning we’re trying to express. Lately, my world feels like it's slowly forming into a sentence I’ve been trying to say for a long time, or maybe I could say it finally seems that others are able to recognize my language and I’m being read in new ways. I feel a little more understood.

It’s only the second week of a new routine—Acupuncture classes, part-time work at the cemetery, staying connected to friends near and far—and I won’t pretend I’ve found my rhythm yet, but the process of figuring out what works is beginning to feel like part of the joy. There's movement, yes, also a groudedness as I wake up each day and choose to be present. The windows of quiet I’ve longed for in my scattered mind, are clearing and it’s easier to tap into that space without the prolonged period of clearing before I can choose mindfully. Ease is coming easier. Practice is becoming habit again.

In this new season, something is shifting. I don’t feel like I’m being carried by emotion as much as I once was—not because I’ve stopped feeling deeply, but because I’ve been able to listen before reacting. I’ve always led with my heart. That hasn’t changed. Recently I have noticed the steady voice inside helping me choose how that heart expresses itself, and it’s nice to hear others close to me are noticing the shift back, too.

This is the tenderness of becoming: being a sentimental heart with a logical dream. I care deeply—sometimes too much, or so I’ve been told. My care has had moments of naiveness, opportunity to be taken advantage of, giving time I didn’t have, or falling into “saviour” mode. Still, this kindness and this caring is what anchors me. Even as I move toward a future shaped by goals and structure, that softness remains. The dream of medicine, of serving and supporting others, comes from that very place inside me that has always felt things strongly. But dreams, even when rooted in love, ask for sacrifices. And I’ve felt that too.

The texture of my heart is elastic—
constantly stretching
and finding closed shape.

Finding places where it's safe
to breathe into the expansiveness
and hide in the shadows.

The colour of my heart is a soft peach—
sometimes bright in her yellows.

There is passion in her reds,
and softness in the orange,
strength in her core.

Power in her care

There’s been fear. Quiet, persistent fear about who or what I might lose by choosing new paths. Following a calling sometimes means leaving a place, or a season of life, or even a person behind. Sometimes, chasing what feels like a purpose comes with the painful realization that I may never return to a version of home you once held dear. That truth has lived in me gently, the little touch of maroon melancholy curled inside.

There are places and people I missed before I’ve even left. And still, something in me knows I have to keep moving. Even in the darkest times, I’ve always kept moving.

I’ve been trying to hold both grief of potential loss and the hope of blossoming. I still work at the cemetery, which feels symbolic in more ways than one. It reminds me that things change form, that endings often carry seeds of transformation. I still find time to be outside, to move, to stay rooted. I stay in touch with loved ones back in BC, and I stay present with my chosen family here. These connections are lifelines. They remind me I’m not alone in this and that there is inevitably an ending—thank goodness for that (which I mean in a way that highlights the beauty in our short time here and that anything “forever” would be hell, as a love of mine said the other day). Death reminds me to appreciate the little things in this life, that the only infinite thing that matters is Love, and that I get to choose the messes that matter—because anything worth fighting for is a mess, but if it makes sense to me, then that is enough.

Saturn has returned to Pisces—my natal Saturn. It feels like a reckoning and a reunion at once. Pisces wants to drift, to feel, to merge with what’s beautiful and unseen. Saturn brings the edges, the weight, the shape. It’s stripped away what was blurry, but not unkindly. It’s invited me to get clearer, not colder. To stay soft, but move with more direction. To let my head and heart become companions instead of competitors.

If I could name what I’m learning, maybe it’s to be both sentimental and strong. To let my dreams have structure, without building walls around my heart. To trust that what’s meant to stay will stay—and that the love I carry can travel with me, even into the unknown.

Sometimes this blog reads like a sounding board to the same broken needle as I unfold my patterns and sew new hats to wear, but I appreciate the new styles and ways I’m expressing myself. It’s helpful to share and to look back. I’m so proud of myself for always sharing and for embracing my sentimental heart— she always turns around to look back for one last glance at everything she’s ever loved. I like that about her.

Songs for the week: 

BAD HONEY by Justin Bieber
Sea in my Tea by Wilderness
OK as I Am by CHINCHILLA
everylittlething by Long Hill Drive

XO

Mar