It’s not like I’ve never put down a dog before.

There was Lucy, who was so old and blind she fell into a bush and couldn’t get back out. Dudley, who was paralyzed by a back injury. Even Sid from long ago who, having been contained too long in the house, escaped out the back door and ran into traffic. All of these decisions were sad but obvious. They were heartbreaks but of the prosaic kind, the kind that invites wistful but temporary sorrow. You keep the collar, you put up some pictures, you move on.

Until Mason, I didn’t know what a crater a dog can leave behind.

I was the one who took him to the vet. I sat on a plush blanket on the tile floor and petted him while he trembled and growled. I was the only thing in this world he trusted and I was the one who had put him squarely in the crosshairs. This was a dog who would have laid down his life for me. His loyalty was impeccable, even if his judgement sometimes missed the mark.

He really was an extraordinary animal.

This was a dog with such navigational skill that on more than one occasion he left me on hikes to run into the wilderness for a half hour or more, and found me again a mile down the trail with the look of ease and satisfaction of an adventure well met. (Eventually, we learned to never let him off the leash.) He could leap over a green gate from a standing position, could run greyhound-fast in loops over fields, and could climb basalt rock faces like a mountain goat. I never saw such a thing.

This dog was terrifying to those he considered risky business, but when it came to us he was effortlessly affectionate. He insisted on joining all hugs. He was dignified and self-assured but also quick to flop on his back for belly rubs.

This was a dog who, when we were on our way to a familiar walk, would break into an open-faced smile, the picture of pure guileless joy. And yet he was no blank-eyed yes-man. He was highly intelligent with opinions, and his opinions were often correct. That said, he did love a lively romp around the local pond. He loved for us to throw sticks so that he could leap into the water in a soaring arc and then swim in wide circles, collecting the booty. He knew how to be fully alive.

After the vet did what the vet had to do and I walked back out of that office without my dog I felt gutshot, like literally my guts were unspooling out of my belly and I had to hold them in with both hands. I felt emptied out like a vacuum had sucked every molecule out of the center of my body. I felt the despair of knowing that I would now have to go forward for the rest of my life carrying the burden of this grief, this bond that will now hang half-finished like the frayed edges of a torn rope.

Losing him blew a hole in the center of my family. When everybody is upset all at the same time, when emotions are running high for all concerned all at once, it’s hard to be there for one another in a kind and regulated way. Which is to say, it’s a shit show. The emotions these last few weeks have been like the beach balls that get passed around the crowd during a concert, constantly batted back into the air, coming down only to rise up again, always on the move. I feel fragile and easily set off. My heart feels tender and abused. I have cried too many times.

I’d like to say that Mason wouldn’t want this but I don’t know what he would want.

Except I know he would want to chase the next deer he saw up and over every river and hill, to live in a world with no fireworks, and to eternally roughhouse with our other dog. He would want to be here with us, keeping us safe.

But that’s not how it is. Instead we are left here without him, a slash torn into the center of our lives, left with the metallic taste of grief in our mouths, gasping for breath as we reckon with this loss.

No: not loss.

Detonation. Wreckage.

The only true measure of love is the degree for which you suffer for it. I loved that insane dog. I loved him. Now the only thing that remains is the grief that honors him, the choking knowing that there’s nothing left but to let him go.

Over the weekend I led an art journaling workshop which was liberating and nourishing and exciting, as I had hoped.

That said, it was also nerve-wracking for my beautiful students. Repeatedly throughout the day these brave humans, elbow-deep in paint but about to add some new layer with some different medium, froze in place and said it was scary.

And their bodies made it clear they weren’t kidding. As in, nervous system going into lockdown. Hand poised over the page, holding a water-soluble crayon like it might detonate. Jaw stiffening against the inevitable blow.

What happened to us that making art is so fucking scary?

Please allow me to assure you that I’m every bit as terrified of art. Just yesterday I was painting in my studio (aside: it feels entirely fraudulent to say I was painting in my studio, like some kind of real artist, when obviously I’m just someone who was left unattended in Blick Art Supply). I was planning to try out a little technique I had just learned, a monoprint where you paint on wax paper and brayer it onto your painting, a different way to make a mark. Since I’m all about layers and making marks and then responding to the marks, I was so excited to try it! And then I stood there like an unplugged android, holding a sheet of wax paper with an oval on it (always the ovals with this one here), scanning a spread of half-done paintings, trying to figure out which one would be the least ruined by this reckless attempt to make art. Wax paper. Oval. REDRUM!

I mean, it’s nuts.

And maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t so incredibly important for us human types to have full and unfettered access to our creativity which, as I’ve said before, is the way through the swamp of our current age.

Yet I’ve never met a person who doesn’t carry a creative wound. Who hasn’t felt the cut of any one of the twisted knives of careless comments, unhelpful critiques, and underhanded nastiness.

To say nothing of the internalized shame tapes that we play as wards against the inevitable evil of criticism. You can’t tell me it sucks! I already know it sucks!

In other words, we go out into the world and rip the shield from our hearts and let ourselves be translated into visual form and thereby run the risk that someone will come along and piss on our tender art like a dog on a flower bed. Uncool. Long-term damage.

So yeah, it takes some guts to make anything, especially when we’re trying something new, especially in front of other people. What will you do with that water-soluble crayon? Will it be good?

Something as soul-restorative as playing with line and color should not be so potentially traumatizing.

Luckily, I have a little healing recipe for you to consider the next time you find yourself rigid with fear over the idea of moving paint around. Or any other creative undertaking, for that matter.

First, I invite you to notice what’s happening in your body. You don’t have to make up a story or find anyone to blame, just notice. Where are you tight? Are you holding your breath? Are you crushing the charcoal to powder in your now-sweating hand? Notice. Gently and with curiosity.

Then, self-kindness. Tell yourself something reassuring^[1]. That you’ll keep practicing until you like what you’re doing. That there’s always another painting. That you like the way those two colors look together. That this is just for fun. If possible, take this a step farther by doing something nice for yourself. Maybe you need to stop and make a cup of tea, bring in some cut flowers from your garden, or make a five minute call to a friend. Re-set the shame spiral with tender action.

Then, get back to work. No, I mean it, get back on that horse. Put the fucking mark on the fucking paper because it does not matter whether or not you hate it, whether or not it’s good. It matters that you did it. Now make another mark and keep going, because every time you keep going even though art is super scary and people are dicks sometimes and your first grade teacher scolded you for coloring outside the lines even though you thought you were being quite intentional, thank you, every time you keep going despite all of that noise it gets a little bit easier the next time.

Maybe art will never be un-scary. Maybe that’s part of its magic. The good news is that you are fully equipped with the courage you need to keep going, supplied in equal measure to the demands of every contentious inner and outer voice there is. You have the guts. I’m proud of you.

^[1] My friend Janice Baker has a collection of small, cheerful toys she calls the Jury of Her Peers, who sit on a shelf above her work space and offer encouraging words like you’re doing a great job and what a wonderful idea. Recommend.

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Creativity isn’t actually about the finished painting or poem or sculpture or song. It isn’t about showing or selling or earning accolades. Creativity is about the movement of energy.

For me, creativity is a medicine that literally transmutes the internal pressure I carry around. A lifetime of neurodivergent oversensitivity has crammed itself into the webbing of my fascia, and miraculously, I have found that making art meets all of that unprocessed data and transforms it, turns it into something useful. I don’t have to spend a thousand years recounting all the large and tiny injuries (“remember the time they all stopped talking when I came around the corner? or how about the time when I should have totally dumped that guy but instead cried when he dumped me?”). I just have to tap in to the unformed energy of all of that stored charge and bam, not only have I made something, but I have let something go.

The urge to create literally pulses in my hands. If I pay attention I can feel it radiating like a hot stone. Creativity is restless in me, regularly demanding that I stop whatever practical thing I’m doing to go make something. The reason I keep working on my paintings instead of scraping the porch like I need to get done before it gets too hot has everything to do with that energy in my hands, that raw material that insists on being channeled somewhere, anywhere.

Or maybe it’s the part of me that just wants to be seen, felt, held in someone’s hands, even if it’s my hands.

Or maybe it’s the universe itself, wanting to be born.

The universe is clay, you see. A broad field of something unshaped and unspoken. It needs us, it needs our hands, it needs our hearts, it needs our wonky imaginations and life experiences and stuck emotions and bleeding spirits and addictions and obsessions and insecurities—in other words, the universe needs a living breathing human—to create the forms that would simply not exist any other way.

Think about that. Whatever you make, however well or badly, would not exist any other way.

This call to create is so fundamental to the order of things that we are lit up with the need to do it. It’s a drive, like thirst. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether you can draw (the number of people who tell me they’re not an artist because they can’t draw is staggering). It has nothing to do with your education, your portfolio, or your Instagram follower count. I mean nothing.

Creativity is its own animal, an alive thing, a moving thing. When you say yes to its call and let it flow through you, something entirely original is born. You are changed because of it.

Every time I doodle in a notebook or write a little poem, I am changed. Something has moved from potential to an actuality, and it has moved through my unique prism, coloring the offering in a unique way. The web of the universe shifts to allow in this thing I have channeled into being, and I shift as I allow it to move through me.

Here’s what I think. To say yes to creativity is to say yes to a higher power. It’s to say yes to the part of you that wants to mean something on this planet. Not to be famous or rich or even acknowledged, but to leave a mark that only you can make. To shift the world we live in, in a way that only you can.

Imagine a world where all of us were completely engaged in bringing forth our original creative work. Imagine a world where everyone had permission to fully express themselves in ways that contribute to the collective, rather than destroy the world around us with the dark potency of thwarted dreams. Take the nukes out of every leader’s hands and give them a paintbrush and a karaoke set. See where the world goes.

Or imagine a world where all those broken-glass moments in your life that had nowhere to go, and are therefore tucked into your gut and humming in your tight muscles, imagine of all of that found a way out. Imagine the liberation that would be possible, if we could compost our old pain into something entirely fresh, and new, and bright-eyed, and full of hope.

I’ll be gathering with an intimate group of amazing humans to explore how color, mark, paper, paint and honest emotions come together in an art journal.

A gentle, encouraging art experience for people who might not yet call themselves artists, but who feel the call to make something anyway.

Also healing for trained artists who need to let go and play.

This event is about the unrestrained joy of making art. Join me if it calls to you. Payment plan available.

To learn more and register click the button below.

get started right here

Art journaling got me into the world of visual art. And it’s a good thing too. At the time I discovered it, I was recently sober, having put down alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes and various other diversions, distractions and destructive tendencies.

When you’ve spent your adult life and frankly, much of your childhood finding ways to check out, numb out and space out, getting into the groove of reality is no mean trick. It’s brutal out there, in case you haven’t noticed.

And if you happen to be mildly autistic, as I’ve recently learned I am, or at least I’m certifiably neurodivergent, well. You’ll want a little something to take the edge off.

The remarkable thing about sobriety is that once you no longer trade your life force for the temporary relief of all those chemicals, you have to find other strategies to help you walk through the snarled tangles of life. I navigate my way by listening for hot tips from my higher power, a shifting entity I don’t understand but that always seems to have my back.

And one way said higher power tossed out a net for me to fall into was to guide me to the magic trick that is art journaling.

Discovering art journaling was for me like the Goonies scene where they discover the pirate ship, all a-dazzle with loose jewels. There was no end to the possibilities, the play, the delight, the supplies, the tutorials, the groups, the blogs, the Tumblrs, and on it went. I could make art and it could be amazing or it could be stupid and I could just turn the page and make the next piece of art. I could fill shelves with the books that were themselves filled with art and every time I made something, I learned. I let go. I processed. I unwound, undid, moved something through me that had been trapped in my body and unsuccessfully medicated for years and years.

Art journaling became a true medicine.

In time I started taking the processes of layering paint and collage and text and marks to the canvas, and then I wandered into fresh art-making territory which has had its own lessons and disappointments and joys.

But the journaling, I come back to the journaling.

An art journal is the opposite of a sacred space. It’s totally irreverent. There’s no way to do it wrong. It’s just a stretch of paper upon which to discover and explore. It’s a place to push ideas, to noodle with favorite supplies, to do things like drizzle paint and glue down scraps of vintage paper. I write in my art journals, construct funky pages, add pockets, stitch pages, hit everything with ink and stencils. And every time, working in a journal moves me out of my head, a place that we in the 12-step world call “a dangerous neighborhood,” and into my body, a place I have a lifetime’s history of avoiding but which happens to be the seat of everything vital, everything true.

Art journaling softens my overstimulated nervous system. It keeps me from the crumbling edge of the addict’s urge toward isolation, negativity and despair. It nourishes that part of me that wants to make a mark, leave a record, and channel a little bit of something that wouldn’t exist without me. It’s tiny and it’s humble and it’s so very powerful.

You can do a little art journaling too. All you need is a blank book and whatever art supplies make you happy. You can paint, collage, draw, stitch, construct, deconstruct, reuse, reimagine, color with pencils or markers or crayons, trace, transfer, do whatever you want. It’s yours. You can write down your Tarot pulls in there. Make lists of what you have to do tomorrow or what you want to do in the next ten years. Write down quotes, thoughts, the titles of books you want to read and shows you want to watch. It’s a space to empty yourself by filling the page. It’s fucking holy.

There’s Art, which is like a sexy boyfriend, the one you can’t believe asked you out.

And there’s art journaling, which is like the friend who always tells you you’re right until you’re ready to hear you’re wrong, which is like a dog that’s always ready to join you for a long walk down interesting sidewalks.

Damaged though I may be by the rigors of life, the structure of my brain and the coping mechanisms I have historically used to cope, art journaling is a place where I meet myself. And I can pick up a paintbrush and color in all the spaces where the light once bled away.

I’ve never been a strong candidate for Employee of the Year. I’ve never been great at holding down jobs. I make it a year, two years max and then I’m wandering off in some other direction.

I care about a thousand times more about meaning than I do about money, which does get tricky when it’s time to pay the bills (Dear Sir: I am enclosing $72.15 worth of Meaning. Please apply to my outstanding balance). I am a relentless creative with a brain that simply does not stop cooking up ideas for little workshops and essays and paintings and podcasts and poems and intentions to drop everything and just go sit in a camping chair in the woods.

So when I put all this together, the not so great at consistency but I still need to make money and the short attention span and the many, many ideas, well, you can see that the only sensible path forward is to give myself permission to change.

And then change again.

I mean hey, the current world around us is changing and changing, flipping through scenarios like a Tarot card reader laying out a spread, then re-shuffling and laying the cards out again. It’s sheer fucking chaos out there. I can’t even keep up, dare I say none of us can keep up, but somehow it makes sense to just keep doing stuff the way we’ve been doing it, keep going to work as planned, keep ordering bullshit on Amazon. No shade, it’s what I’ve been doing too—until, as I’m getting to here, I can’t.

I recently sent what I thought was a well-thought-out email to my mailing list explaining how I was changing the way I offer my BodyTalk work, a healing modality that helps bodies see and let go of stuck patterns. For many years I’ve offered this work in a one-to-one fashion, with scheduled appointments in my office or over Zoom. I started burning out quite a while ago, but I kept on going. I’m good at the work, my clients seemed to enjoy it, I was excessively trained in it, and it was a core offer in my bodywork practice. So suit up, show up and shut up, kid.

Well, as I’ve discussed a couple of times now, back in February my brain did a little loop-de-loop which turned out to not have long-term effects but which decidedly got my attention. And I knew that what my body was demanding was that I step back from BodyTalk. To which I said no no no no no

and it said yes yes yes yes

So I cancelled a pile of clients and stepped back for a day, okay a week, okay a month. And every time I re-booked and went back to the work my body rebelled. I mean it was loud. You wouldn’t think a person whose job is to listen to bodies would need her own to become so shouty, but apparently I’m stubborn. Anyway it has taken several months for me to understand that something has shifted for me, and it doesn’t appear to be short-term.

So as I was saying I wrote what I thought was a well-thought-out email explaining that now I’d only be offering BodyTalk remotely, no more one-to-one scheduled appointments. I thought that would take care of business for sure! And it did not. My body continued to be extremely clear. Doing energy work right now is off the table. Off. The. Table.

(For the record, I am still doing massage, and it’s still awesome.)

I do not have control of this, which is distressing. I’ve been trying to make sense of my behavior, trying not to drag my poor clients over the bumpy road of whether or not I can continue doing what I’ve been doing, trying to come up with pithy ways to make sense of my strange, abrupt work shift, trying to pin all this on the planets or the evolving collective consciousness or other elements of my life, all to no avail. I can’t do this thing anymore, and I can’t properly explain why.

So my little business is reeling and I basically feel like an idiot. I even went looking for real jobs before it became clear pretty quick that I’m absolutely not cut out for the world of the Real Job. And finally I just had to say: it looks like something changed. And then when I thought I had navigated the change, I changed some more.

I sure do fight it. I want things in my life to line up and make sense. I have a narrative about who I am, what I’m doing, what people can expect of me and where I’ll be headed next. But sometimes all that is just, nope. Sometimes I’m led off in another direction entirely.

I will say here that while it makes no sense, I am beginning to wonder if, at this juncture, I am supposed to be spending more time being an artist, and less time trying to fix every last human being. A question to ponder as things go along, I guess.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that in times of tremendous collective change, we as individuals are changing. Sometimes unpredictably. And the more the frequencies raise on the planet (and they are raising, oh yes, that’s why everything looks like such a mess), the more we’re all going to be called to shed skin after skin after skin.

And as we change, we can fight it tooth and nail (raises hand), or give up and relax into what the moment calls for (eventually, also raises hand). Life is going to do with me what it will, and it goes better if I just let things happen the way the Good Lord has planned. Because at the end of it all, I profoundly believe that we’re all guided toward love and creativity and growth and joy, if we’ll just stop hanging on to every root along the bank and just flow the hell down the river.

It doesn’t have to look pretty. All that life asks of us is that we remain alive. And to be alive is to change.

And then, to change again.

Under the lengthening shadow of the sprawling and complex problems now facing us, what with the political circus and the natural disasters and the supply chains and the gas prices and the ridiculous jacking-up of streaming-service prices (come on, Pluribus isn’t gonna watch itself), one might ask: what good is creativity?

I mean: what does it add to the world to close your Facebook tab (close it, close it, please close it) and go over to your tiny art space to make a painting? How is the world better if you stop what you’re doing to write a poem? Is humanity really going to pull through the eye of this needle with the help of your sourdough bread, your herb garden, your sashiko mending? What good is the creative life?

I’ve thought about this repeatedly, and here a couple of things I’ll share with you in the event that you’re thinking a) art is stupid why bother we’re all going to die or b) what’s the point, nothing I do matters anyway. Which would be sad things to think but I know I’ve thought them. So here you go.

Creativity matters because.

It channels healing energy. Whenever you make something, the Universal Pulse uses you as a vessel to create shapes that would otherwise not exist. When you create a poem or a garden or a painting or a crock of sauerkraut, you give form to something that, without you, would be nothing more than potential. It’s your willingness to get in there and make your thing, which by the way is probably going to be imperfect and awkward and full of lessons about how to do it better next time, that opens the door to feeling restored, reharmonized, right. You can’t only let the creative flow move through you without also catching at least a glimpse of peace, of purpose, of meaning. It’s the nature of the thing.

It stimulates collective creativity. I believe that when we as individuals plug into the creative flow, we influence the whole human morphic field, like sucking on a hose to start a siphon going. The more of us that draw on that mysterious force, the greater our human potential to birth world-changing ideas, or perhaps midwife in the willingness to adopt some of the ideas that are already here. We open the door for all of us.

The creative life relieves stress. I don’t know, are you stressed? From living without a social safety net in disconnected, soulless systems? Yeah, me neither. The good news about engaging in the creative life is that whether or not you end up with a finished product, the very act of creating reduces the high-tension-wire thrumming that has a way of jacking up your body. Getting out of your head and into your hands is a special kind of magic.

It helps you process emotions. Part of the reason creativity feels good is that it gets that bubbling cauldron of difficult emotions moving in an acceptable direction. You’re really, really not allowed to stab anyone with something sharp and near to hand, but you can totally express your rage all over a canvas or on a dance floor and it will not only be cathartic but might transmute into something cool. You can grieve into your art, scream into your art, ruminate into your art, perseverate into your art, twist every last trembling anxious nerve into a knot and stick it right straight into your art, where it will happily go, leaving you much more free. All that liberated emotion might even become something that resonates with another human, setting them free too.

It reconnects us to our humanity. Humans are a real piece of work sometimes, but one thing we do have going for us is our creativity. If we’ve been formed in the image of God, then surely this is how: our urge to make things. The earliest Cro-Magnon sites show evidence of art-making. Even as humanity was developing the tools to allow us to hunt and clothe ourselves and build shelter, we were also working out how to make paints and pots and rattles and drums. Needed for survival? Nope. Just baked into our relationship with the world. As humans, we size up what we see and then put our own little stamp on it. It says: I was here. I breathed on this funny little planet. I lived a life and left something behind, even if something entirely impermanent, even if only for a little while.

Whatever is happening out there or within your own body, creativity is part of you. Assuming you’re human, of course.

Look, the world is going to do what it’s going to do. I have my (high) hopes for our planet and our species and I’ll do what I can but for the most part, it’s beyond my pay grade.

But I sure can make an impact on our dynamic, interwoven web of existence just by writing the stuff I’m born to write and making the art I’m born to make. No one else can make my stuff and that’s why I must make it. My contribution is vanishingly small, but who knows which drop is the one that allows the cup to spill over at last? Which human contribution will be the one to rewrite the world? It will be small. It might be yours.

There’s something entirely liberating about having just enough of a health incident that you stop and re-think everything you’re doing without needing to suffer a totally derailing event.

As I wrote about last week, I experienced a little neurological thing, a TIA, which has left absolutely no lasting impacts but which was startling enough to stop me in my hurtling tracks so I could say, what the hell am I doing.

Here’s what I was doing.

I was working my ass off. But there’s two things to understand about that, if you’re so inclined: one, my carrying capacity is much lower than that of other bodywork practitioners I know, and therefore I have this constant narrative muttering along in my brain that tells me again and again that I’m coming up short; and two, my work is my divine right work, the best and only work there is for me.

Oh, and I don’t know anyone else who does quite what I do. There’s that too.

(For those who don’t know, I help people heal their fried nervous systems and to allow space for more of themselves, manually through massage and energetically through BodyTalk.)

Anyway somehow I got it in my head that I was indispensable and so I ignored repeated and ever-louder signals that I had to restructure the way I’m doing my days.

And it’s true: I already had a flexible, satisfying, tailor-made, well-compensated work life, the very essence of privilege, which paradoxically is another setup for compare-and-despair, in this case saying to myself: it’s not like you’re coal mining, what are you squawking about?

But as I talk about all the time, the body has its own agenda. And my body’s agenda is, at least for now, to direct my energy flow towards some of the things I’ve been wanting to create, and to withdraw (again, for now) from doing quite as much direct healing work. It’s almost like: the call is to expand my healing work. Moving from the laser-focused, intense energy exchange that characterizes a BodyTalk session, toward more of the diffuse, far-reaching light of making something that can cover more ground.

As I said: for now.

Having redirected my time and energy somewhat, I am officially recommitting to this newsletter.

My commitment is to post one essay here each month, crafted to stir the essence of your creative spirit and to remind you that you’re not alone on this human journey.

Of course, unlike other email lists I’ve maintained, Substack has a paid element. I can’t tell you what an honor it is when people choose to become paid subscribers, but it also has literally kept me up nights trying to work out how to say thank you. And I came up with a great answer!

For the time being, new annual subscribers ($50) will be the delighted recipients of a hand-gathered paper arts pack, which may include such tidbits as a handmade art journal, collage supplies, or tiny original art. A scrumptious package in the mail!

And first-time monthly paid subscribers will receive an original art postcard, suitable for framing and hanging above the mantel.

AND OF COURSE you don’t have to be a paid subscriber for me to value you. Your time is so valuable. Your attention is valuable. Your replies mean everything to me. When you comment on or share an essay that gives me pure butterflies. This is why I don’t intend to paywall any of my essays. Because I’m not in this for the profit motive, like, at all.

My hope every time I write is that you’ll see yourself in me. In the mucking about, trying to find my way, like hopping hummock to hummock through a swamp. Every now and then I misstep, but boy has it been an interesting journey.

Between essays and my reduced bodywork schedule, I’ll be reporting in from working in my studio (paintings and art journals, mostly), getting my gardens going, teaching BodyTalk Access (a self-care system that upgrades your body and brain), and planning a summertime art journal mini retreat in the Cascades.

You know, the juicy creative stuff.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my bodywork life. I love my clients (if you’re one of them, hi!). But the more spins I make around the sun the more I’ve come to respect the limitations of living in three dimensions, with a neurodivergent brain and a complicated history.

Making something exist that didn’t exist before is a pure elixir to my spirit. I hope that what I create will be its own kind of service. But isn’t it a service to be who we are? And isn’t swimming in deep creativity a surefire way to experiment with what exactly that is? And isn’t the high frequency, expansive, lush experience of making what only we can make a beacon that draws love down into this planet and radiates outward, leaving all of us a little more restored? I think so. I’m committed to that.

TL;DR:

• I had a neurological event that made me take a lil pause

• I’m offering only remote BodyTalk sessions while I restore

• I’m still doing massage

• I’m offering upcoming classes

• I remember how much I love living a creative, responsive, human-centered life

Last Tuesday, on an otherwise ordinary morning, I started to get a funny feeling in my face. In a matter of minutes the entire right side of my face went numb, from the center of my tongue clear out to my ear. Like totally numb. Like dentist-office numb.

Now this is a strange sensation I assure you, and just for extra funsies it happened on the exact one-year anniversary of my husband having a stroke, which he’s way too young for, and from which he came out mostly unscathed, but still, the whole topic was fresh in my head. Then boom, there went my brain too.

A visit to the friendly folks at the ER confirmed the good news that this strange event wasn’t a stroke (one stroke per family, hard limit), but also that it was not nothing. It was something. What exactly the something was remained a mystery.

Lucky for me I traffic in body mysteries so I took a dose of my own medicine and tuned in to see if I could hear what my body was trying to tell me. I didn’t have to listen very hard because it had been trying to talk to me for quite a while, with increasing sensations of various sorts, exactly the kinds of things I support my clients with. Things like physical symptoms, nebulous melancholy, feeling irritable, feeling lost.

My body was saying: sister, you are way off track.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time then you know that I walk a wobbly line between being an attuned intuitive medicine practitioner, vibing with Spirit and channeling the Light, and being a slut for achievement. I want to be of the highest possible service—I really, truly do—but I also want to pretend I have more energetic capacity than I do, I want to be everyone’s very favorite, I want to solve every problem and salve every wound. One of these sides of me is Divine, the other is the product of late-stage capitalism, American industry and possibly inhaling too much Aqua-Net in the 80s. (It couldn’t be helped.)

Propped up in the emergency room bed, wearing the silly outfit and anchored with the mandatory tubes and cords, hoping I was not contending with anything dramatic in my brain, I said, okay. What is this about. And that’s when I knew I had to make some changes.

To wit:

I’m tweaking the way I offer my primary service, BodyTalk sessions. For the time being, I’ll be working remotely. This means that you book a session, I send you a quick and low-stress intake form so I know what’s up, then I run your session within 72 hours of receiving your intake form. I record an audio of your session notes and when you listen to the session, the shifts process. It’s pretty freakin cool. We don’t have to do any scheduling acrobatics, you get a recording that you can re-listen to if you’re so inclined, and it costs less than a scheduled session, so like, wins all around.

(If you’ve purchased packages with me and have sessions pending, or are already on my schedule, never fear, I’ll be in touch.)

I plan to return to doing sessions in the office and over Zoom, but for the moment I need to step back. Or so says my body.

I’ll still be doing massage, which is its own brand of miraculous and something I feel available for right now.

Another wake-up from all this is that I’m recommitting to my creative life, an element of my day that’s non-optional. It’s not a hobby. It’s not a nice-to-have. It’s my portal into quiet. It’s my phone line to God.

I have no idea how to live my life without the direct, ongoing, trust-centered focus on what I think my Higher Power, which for the sake of ease I call God, would like me to do. It’s hairy to trust God for all my moves but nothing else seems to work very well, whereas when I follow my internal compass everything seems to turn out beautifully. This much I have learned, again and again.

My creative practice is how I listen to that internal compass. It clears the channel.

The good news for you is that many of the things I want to create, aside from paintings and essays and art journals, are events. I already have a BodyTalk Access class booked in Kailua-Kona Hawaii (got any Big Island friends who want to learn some sweet healing moves?), with more in the chute for Ellensburg, online, and a few other cities.

Also, I’m noodling on offering an art journaling/ nervous-system-restoring mini retreat in late June in central WA. If you’d like to be notified when that goes live and get some early-bird incentives (I do love to give out prezzies), hit reply and say YES TO ART JOURNALING to be added to the interest list.

And other stuff too, but as this latest adventure has reminded me, I can only do so much. And my so much is not as much as I wish it were. I’m not a machine, even if our hyper-productive society treats us all like that’s the ideal. You’re not a machine either.

My body doesn’t want to be reaching out into some impossible future in the stratosphere where I’m hustling all day long and then tap-tapping on my laptop late into the night, where I’m overcommitted and thinking I’m being impressive. My body, it seems, has only so much to give. Which is fine, as long as I respect that.

When I try to override my limits, as I’ve been doing for months now against my better wisdom, then my body smacks me down. And it should. I’m here to live the precise life that only I can live, I’m here to make the stuff only I can make, I’m here to practice my intuitive medicine within the confines of my own physiology, and I’m here to encourage you, dear reader, fellow beleaguered human, to follow your own needs too.

Because seriously, no one else is going to clear the way for you. Other people will want you to keep doing and doing and doing because it’s not their job to know where your edge is, and you’re great at what you do, of course you are. But you have permission to recognize your own capacity and to honor it. You have permission to change your mind about what you thought you could manage.

You have permission to thrive in whatever way suits you best. It’s what you’re made for. May you not need to push yourself to the point where you end up in the CT scanner. Let me learn this lesson on your behalf.

May you stop, right now, and breathe. Your body knows which way to go. What to embrace, what to release, what to trust, what to explore, what to release back into the stream of life. Let’s listen to that sweet song together.

Hello my love,

I’m an optimist, either by nature or as a survival mechanism, but I have to admit the simple volume of external chaos has kept my nervous system escalated. I don’t need to rehash all the crazy bullshit that’s going down, but I will say out loud and for the record that I’m horrified, and that while I personally sit comfortably in the bubble of being a white educated middle-class person, I know from being a pretty ordinary student of history that shit that goes sideways like it is right now has a way of starting to sweep up all kinds of people, not only the people of color trying to just, you know, be alive, but then the dissidents and the gay people and the trans people and the artists and the people who just don’t agree with the unspeakable behavior of people who think they have no accountability, which they will, they always do, but too late for their victims, which of late are starting to seriously stack up.

So, yeah. I could use a little internal quiet. How bout you?

As a part of my 12-step practice I am now regularly sitting still, what some might call “meditating,” but others might call a lively romp into the psychedelic circus that is my brain, which never ever shuts up.

What works better for me is to stitch.

I mean, just a thread and needle and fabric, sometimes making something that will be useful, but often just putting stitches in cloth, because it soothes me, because I love the way it feels. If you’re a stitcher, then you know what I mean.

So I said to myself, I said, self, how about we set aside an hour for the stitch-inclined folks around me who desire a quiet hour of regulated nervous systems and the peaceful lull of needle and thread?

So I created Soft Stitch, a meditation circle for busy-brained busy-hands quiet-resistant disregulated kind compassionate people.

On Sunday February 1st from 11:30 to 12:30 Pacific time, we’ll gather over Zoom with our hands ready to stitch and our hearts ready to heal.

We’ll start off with a a few minutes to say hello, then we’ll do one or two simple techniques to get our minds settled. Then I’ll turn on the groovy music and for thirty minutes we’ll just stitch. In quiet. No talking. No phones. No bustling about. Just slow, centered, gentle, focused stitching.

Then we’ll give ourselves a little time to connect if we wish and to share anything that came up in our quiet time.

If this turns out to be awesome, we’ll do it again.

There’s no charge for Soft Stitch. I’m hoping this will be a gift to my creative community.

Just click right here at 11:30 next Sunday the 1st and get ready for some serious chill.

Meanwhile, may you stay calm, may you stay centered, may you stay human.

Hope to see you on the 1st.

All the love,

xo Robin

I’m enchanted with the idea of slowing down. The other day I found myself getting verklempt as my massage therapist described some self-sufficient friends who live on twenty acres with a hydroponic greenhouse and milk goats. These are people who preserve their own peaches and make their own soap. I was momentarily hazy with the fantasy of being a person who wakes up at dawn to gather eggs, who pauses from her vigorous hoeing (it’s winter, but let’s not get fussy) to smell the rich earth, glad to be alive.

I’ve been indoctrinated with slow-living images that look like women drinking coffee beside their vintage trailers; monkish minimalists traveling the world by bicycle; and rugged woods-dwellers living in snug cabins, spending their days growing kitchen herbs. It all looks like satisfaction made manifest, with maybe just a touch of superiority.

I’m a person who reads about slow living the way I used to read the newest diet book, one hand still in a bag of chips. Maybe I just need a fresh perspective! Maybe I will change my life! Tomorrow.

I’ve been promising myself I will slow down for years now, but always with a profound vagueness of what that would actually look like. I don’t have a hydroponic greenhouse, I already tried to raise chickens until a serial-killing raccoon put a stop to that, and I have too many ideas to fit them all into my life. I end up overscheduled and overcommitted and exhausted and eventually resentful, unreliable and sick. And confused, because wasn’t I trying to slow down?

Many years ago, my eccentric aunt went through a crazy stage wherein she decided she never wanted to go furniture shopping again, and so purchased a lifetime supply of sofas, which was three sofas. She and my uncle crammed these sofas in their living room, which resulted in a space you couldn’t stand in, never mind relax in, and the whole room became a place to avoid.

My life has been a living room full of sofas. Good things, useful things, just too many and too much.

But this past year, maybe because of a bunch of 12-step work, maybe because I’m in my mid-fifties, maybe because I just don’t have the fucking energy for all of this, I’ve been slowing my life down. And no, my slower life does not involve milk goats or a mossy cabin in a silent forest. It’s more…just getting honest about my sofas.

For one thing, I’ve begun to understand how much time things actually take. Until fairly recently, I stacked my life like I could eat lunch, run some errands and catch up on a few quick phone calls all at once. Since as it turns out this kind of thing isn’t possible, I would repeatedly end up getting the things I expected of myself nowhere near done. Then would have an anxiety attack.

In the same vein, I expected that I could offer multiple kinds of events every month without taking into consideration the sharing of these events, the prep, the setup, the breakdown and the supporting of the attendees before, during and after each of these experiences. I was exhausting myself and could not understand why, since I was only thinking about the time and energy investment in the events themselves.

Then I would make commitments to create bodies of work or to write essays on a certain schedule, and I would tell folks I was going to do these things in such a way as to be eaten away with shame when, inevitably, I did not.

And let’s not even talk about my tendency to over-commit at work.

In the past year or so (menopause, maybe?) I’ve gradually come to terms with how much time really exists in a day, and how much energy is actually in my body, which in short is not nearly enough to sustain the flood of ideas and short-term enthusiasm I was trying to sustain.

And so I started to give things up. Plans. Ideas I had talked up with encouraging friends. Comparison. People pleasing. So many hidden drivers behind my tendency to say yes and yes and yes.

Just today, when asked when I’m planning on offering a particular class, I said I’m not ready to commit to a date right now, and that was that. Imagine! Having the gall to be disappointing!

In this way, there has gradually been more space in my days. More empty calendar spots. More room to be spontaneous or to just do nothing.

This looks nothing like my lush wooded-cabin fantasies. It just looks like less furniture in the room.

As a maximalist adventure-seeking dopamine junkie, this reality can feel disappointing. You mean I’m not going to sell everything and spend the next six months hiking through South America?

Seemingly, I’m not. What I’m going to do instead is have time to breathe. To be present in the clean, clear, unpressured life that is starting to unfold around me.

This week both our cars were out of commission. I had time to walk.

I had time to clean my studio, piece a quilt I’m making for my husband, crochet a pair of fingerless gloves, and write this very essay.

I took care of my home and my body and my clients, all without feeling like I was jamming one more thing into the edges of my life.

This kind of unremarkable time ownership is what slowing down actually looks like. Not a whole different life. My life, only less of it. Or at least, less of it all at once.

What I give up in the teeth-grinding thrill of jacked-up daily adrenaline, I gain in peacefulness, which turns out to not be boring at all, but instead the gateway to appreciating the moments of my life as they happen, as opposed to anticipating the someday-life that overfilled days promise, as in someday I will be able to sit back and relax, maybe read a book, but today I have to do these two million things.

Today I choose to remove the excess furniture from my life. I may not be an urban-homesteading, chicken-raising, yogurt-making kind of slow living person, but I can be a person whose life fits in my day. That’s all the slow I need.

Many years ago I spent most of a summer in Europe, which was lovely and everything, I mean my sister and I had a whole pile of adventures, but by the end of the journey I was deeply homesick. Not just for my own house and my own bed, but for America. Loud, brash, obnoxious, colorful America. The land of aggressive honesty, shameless avarice, American-flag sneakers, no-holds-barred generosity, 32-ounce coffee, insatiable curiosity, adolescent self-importance, and the joyful, creative, idealistic attitude that whatever the problem is, we can solve it, goddam it. And we can. Or at least we can give it a wholehearted shot.

I am a person who tears up when someone sings The Star-Spangled Banner. This country means something to me. Not the government, which is stuffed with desperately flawed humans—but the systems. The ideals behind what we’re trying to do here. And of course we absolutely suck at it. No one is equal, capitalism is eating the earth, we’re reaping the benefits of stolen land and stolen people, our social safety net is as robust as a sex worker’s thong—you get the drift. But do we ever keep trying!

There’s something in Americans that does indeed believe in the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And when you tell an American something is our right, we will fight for it. We’re feisty like that.

I’ve been very gloomy these past many months, watching an absolute wrecking ball take out infrastructure that until this year I assumed was inviolable. Like, I don’t know, I guess I just believed that experts would run the FAA and Social Security and the Department of Defense, whoops that’s not what it’s called anymore. It’s been grim!

But on Saturday. There we were. Ridiculous optimists all. In blow-up bumblebee costumes, in sunflower hats, in tutus. Mad, yes, pissed at the damage being done, but the vibe was joyful, neighborly, an instant community lined up along the main drag. Someone was playing a bongo. People were laughing and hugging. When the crowd began the march to the downtown park, a big Black man walked right into intersections to direct traffic, doing an outstanding job of keeping everyone safe while making sure drivers weren’t stuck behind a 1500-person parade. Someone with a bullhorn tried to rouse the crowd into chants, but we weren’t really into it. The mood was more: we’re here for each other. We’re here to show that we’re here. And we’re willing to stand up, to be seen, to take a risk because people be crazy these days, and to say—we believe in America.

This is my America.

I’m not sure how much it changed the world that I went out on Saturday with some friends and a couple thousand of my neighbors, but it changed me. Because it brought back hope.

Seven million Americans taking to the streets brings back hope.

I did a thing and created a slow stitch retreat!

If you’re into hand stitching because it’s the most soothing relaxing thing ever, if you love textiles and making little stitchy things, if you’re into heart-centered conversations with tender people, if your overworked nervous system purrs at the idea of a quiet, loosely structured, profoundly supportive gathering, and if you know already you’re going to need an infusion of California sun in late February (I know I will), then RESTORE is just the ticket.

This retreat is limited to ten attendees and is going to be the gentlest kind of epic.

Sound like your vibe? Hit the lil ol button below and see if this memory-making joyfest is for you.

It’s a hell yes for me. I’d love to share it with you.

Tell me more!

I decided to start a Substack because I thought it was cool. I didn’t invest in much more planning than that. I just knew I wanted to write love letters to you.

So now that we've been together for some months, it occurs to me that perhaps I should introduce myself to you, delightful reader.

I mean, who is this person you’ve invited into your life? Which is a thing I deeply appreciate, by the way.

In answer to that question here’s a list of tidbits about me you might find interesting.

1. I’ve been to 49 states and 11 countries. I like to lead with this one because I think my travel experiences have thoroughly informed who I am. It’s not just about seeing new places, which happens to be a thing that makes me feel wildly alive. It’s about the personal growth that emerges from coping with hardship (sleeping on a sticky Danish station floor waiting for the 5am train); leaning into intuitive knowing (packing up the car and bolting from a campsite due to troublesome new “friends”— let’s meet some locals, we said); opening up my senses in ways I didn’t know were possible (the searing heat of deep Utah red rock country, so silent the sound of a single buzzing fly was like an airplane); and connecting with a hundred rowdy humans with whom I didn’t share a common tongue (singing Summer Solstice shanties in a beer-hall on Norway’s North Cape). Travel has taught me that humans are good, that the Universe has my back, that I can take care of myself in all manner of circumstances, and that we live on a breathtaking, extraordinary gift of a planet. It’s really quite the thing.

2. I’m unemployable. I tried to be employable. I spent a few years in my young life trying out a handful of jobs that involved cubicles, pantyhose, circulating forced air and bad break room coffee. Oh, and also a steady paycheck and benefits, but who can stand it? Not I. I hardly ever made it more than a couple of months before I was trying the next thing. Eventually I discovered that the only paid work I can do is being of service to other humans. I was able to look like a regular person for a while doing caregiver work. I did manage to clock eight whole years as a 911 dispatcher, which is a real job, but my empathetic nature and aversion to fixed schedules finally did me in.

3. Speaking of my empathetic nature, I’m an empath. For a while there everyone was an empath, kind of like everyone’s enemy is now a narcissist, but for what it’s worth I can feel other peoples’ emotions. It’s an inconvenience. I eventually connected my unemployable-ness and my freakish sensitivity to become a BodyTalk practitioner. Voilá! Work I’ve been able to keep up for seventeen years now! And no nylons ever required.

4. I moved from Massachusetts to Washington State in the summer of 1998. It was supposed to be just for the summer, hanging out with my two stepbrothers who were living off-grid in the Cascade mountains. My one brother said, I never know what day it is and the sun is my clock. That kind of life sounded mighty right to me so off I went. I spent all the money that was supposed to be for my return bus ticket on beer (an hour’s drive away on roads too hazardous to comprehend, but what’s a cabin without beer?). I had to get a job to get my bus money and there I met my husband. We are still married. And I still live in Washington State.

5. I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict. I know addiction. I also know recovery. Drugs and alcohol were a solution to my anxiety, unprocessed trauma and self-consciousness for many years. Not a great solution, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I sure did have some fun. But as with all things that are fundamentally false, addiction finally showed its true face, which in this case is boredom. When you’re a drunk and a stoner all you do is the same fucking thing day after day after day, and the window in which you enjoy that same thing gets ever narrower, until one day you find yourself drunk in the local tavern at 4pm with the afternoon light slanting in and you didn’t even catch a buzz and you’re well aware that no one else around you is drunk enough to engage in inane conversation about nothing, which leaves you lonely and empty and starting to rethink your choices. And then just maybe you get hammered at a family gathering with your two toddlers running loose and you don’t care because you’re tying one on and surely someone is watching the children, and then you and your newest friend drink absolutely all of the alcohol in the house, including a bottle of wine from the friend’s wedding that was being saved in a special handmade case, and then you wake up with a hangover like someone power drilling your eyeballs and your husband looking like he might actually have reached his limit with you and you think, hey, maybe it’s time for one of those 12-step meetings. And you get sober.

6. I’m a hopeless, raving creative. There’s really no cure for the kind of creative thirst I live with. I create: paintings, poems, art journals, essays, newsletter posts, baskets, bowls, quilts, bags and businesses. To name a few things. As far as I can tell, making things is the ultimate human purpose. It’s the thing we do. When someone tells me they’re not creative, I never believe them but I’m sad for them all the same. Imagine forgetting your creative nature! That would be like forgetting how to laugh. Like forgetting how to be in love. Creativity is a force that moves through me without me needing to do a single thing except show up and follow its lead. It’s the elixir I live on.

7. I’m inconsistent as hell. It’s a character flaw. I wish I was more of a stick-to-it type of person, but when my interest in something wanes it’s like there’s no energy at all to do the thing that sounded so fascinating just a short time before. I’ve learned to accommodate this tendency by offering projects and services that are irregular, cyclic and seasonal. What this might mean for you as a reader is that sometimes I’m pumping out posts, and sometimes there are long silences. I hope you’ll see this as permission to also move with your own creative cycles.

8. I believe that humans are evolving. Rapidly. So much of my BodyTalk work is about facilitating that shift. I figure that if I can assist other people on the journey of letting all those congested emotions and problematic coping strategies start to process out, then the ripple effect will be worthwhile. I believe that things look so dark right now because we are shifting into a whole new expression of Light. I believe that humans have a massive capacity to love, to connect, to create, to harmonize, to heal, to grow, to nurture, to tend, to discover, to vibrate in a way that we never have before. I even believe (or maybe I want to believe) that we may be able to restore balance and beauty to this precious Earth, our one and only home. I want to be part of making that happen.

9. I love to write about the discoveries I make in the course of living an awkward, imperfect, irregularly self-examined life. I always hope that the insights I uncover will be valuable for you, too. We think we’re so different but aren’t we all doing this human thing together?

And now: you.

If you dare, drop a comment with a tidbit or two about you that you find interesting. What are you into? What do you care about? What’s the craziest thing that happened on a road trip? Tell me everything.

and now for my first-ever link roundup

there is SO MUCH GREAT STUFF out there in the internets and I’m just not one to add everything to my Instagram stories, so here you go instead

I have just discovered Amanda Laird and her Slow and Steady work, which is beautifully organized, generous and rich with permission to create a business that fits your true self.

I am FREAKING OBSESSED with Tad Hargrave and Marketing for Hippies. After buying a bunch of shorter workshops I finally joined the membership and I can’t get enough. If you are a spirit-centered biz owner and you’ve been burned by the heavy-handed marketing tactics out there, check his work out. It just might restore your faith in the healing potential of business.

Orly Avineri is my favorite artist and instructor and she’ll be teaching a new workshop at Art & Soul in Portland in October: Exploring Minimalism in Mixed Media. I recommend everything she does. She’ll remind you that art is in your bones.

The grounded and gentle artist Louise Fletcher will be doing her free 10-day Creative Reset course starting August 26. I did it last year and got a kick out of it.

I just started reading the 1938 memoir A Woman in the Polar Night. It makes me think that I, too, could pack a rucksack and go live in a hut on the edge of the world. Probably easier to just read about it, though.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for reading. Thanks for being excellent. I believe in you.

all the love

Robin

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I’m in Las Vegas, the city of bright lights, glazed-over people and too much fakery, hanging out with my friend who’s here for a conference. Tomorrow we’ll be shagging ass out of here in a little rented car to groove with Zion and Bryce National Parks, but today I had a whole day to myself. I told myself I was going to knuckle down and get a bunch of writing done, but then some wise part of my mind said, what are you, nuts? Which, to be fair, I kind of am. I have a constant source of internal pressure endlessly nagging me towards doing something Useful, preferably something profitable. All day in a hotel room while my friend does conference stuff? Think of the word count I could get in!

Or, I could go to the spa.

I was rewarded for this choice with one of those massages that transported me out of the churning mental space I inhabit so much of the time, and gently deposited me right back in the center of my own spirit. The relentless noise of productivity eased back and in its place was the quiet center of simple knowing. This is the part of me that is inclined to take long walks and read on the porch on a warm evening, that paints for hours without knowing quite what I’m doing, that values connection more than achievement. The part of me that just wants to be. Quietly. Slowly.

It made me think of a phrase I encountered in massage school. My instructor liked to say “if you want to go deep, you gotta go slow.” This bit of advice has become my bodywork modus operandi. Muscles, like the people they support, do not like to be rushed into change. You can’t just get in there and beat the shit out of a muscle spasm; it will fight you. You have to take your time. You have to offer an invitation and provide the space for the tension to let go.

As I was reveling in the divine experience that was this particular massage (seriously, this woman had game), it came to me that the same is true of spiritual unwinding.

I get myself in such a hurry to be some kind of evolved superhuman. I will let go of every single hangup and toxic belief system! I will overcome all tendencies toward people-pleasing, procrastination, and addictive behaviors! I will make every second count! Even my spiritual path has been tainted by the stain of capitalism. In this case, the idea that there is no time. I have to make big changes now. I have to figure out my life. I have to dazzle—if not the world at large, at least my own inner chart of gold stars. There are never enough gold stars. So I’m always working, if not in some overt way, then internally, always thinking about how best to offer my work and how to execute even a few of the many ideas that come waltzing through my head on a regular basis, always trying to outrun some sense that the clock is ticking and the world is ending and I have so much to do.

It takes a full-stop interruption, sometimes, for me to see how insane that is. (I had a similar, though more dramatic moment when my husband had a stroke.)

Where do I think I’m going? What difference does it make if I spend the morning making the most of spa facilities? How will an extra hour of tinkering on my website bring me more long-term satisfaction than allowing myself to fully relax?

It will not. What will pay off for much longer is in fact giving myself the space to downregulate my overambitious nervous system. Sitting there in the dimmed spa lounge with the throw pillows and the iced herbal tea, grooving to soothing spa music, already a little spaced out from time in the sauna beforehand, my body began to let go of that unending sense of urgency. And this I know: the only way to fully heal is to fully relax. As long as a body is in go-mode it’s always going to hold something back for just-in-case. If your nervous system is squatting near the exit door, ready to bolt, your body simply will not fully shift into the deep repair work that it needs to do, living as it does in a high-impact world full of toxins and banana-pants news stories and crappy ergonomics. The body will skate along, getting some of the work done, but reserving its energies for a possible emergency, because you can’t be too careful! Things could go south!

On the other hand, once the body lets go of emergency mode and moves fully into its rest-and-digest expression, profound healing can occur. It’s a different kind of productivity. It’s not response; it’s repair.

So: if I want to go deep, if I want to allow my connection with what-I-call-God to spread its easeful light through my system, if I want to process and release the ongoing churn of emotional buildup that often gets the best of me, if I want to allow my physical body to restore, I have to slow down.

When I’m all go-go-go, not only is my body itself not going to get the green light to do its best healing work, but the personal growth that I value so highly can’t get much traction. I skitter around from one idea or insight to the next. I can’t soften into nuance. I think about writing ideas, then I want to go paint, then I’m seeing BodyTalk and massage clients, then I’m thinking about business models. It’s exhausting.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, this is a lesson I need to learn repeatedly, in large part because we do in fact live in a productivity culture that has conflated what we do with who we are. It’s not going to give up easily, this drive to prove something. But if I stay with this moment and allow it to release, if I accept and allow the truth that the times of not-doing are perhaps even more important than the times of doing, if I remember at least sometimes to slow down, to let myself sink below the roiling surface into the nourishing amniotic fluid of changeless being-ness, then I might return to the surface with something to give. Something to share. Something to remind me, and you, that we simply are.

The world as we know it has come undone. The political landscape is a dumpster fire visible from space. I’m worried: that my transgender child is going to get rounded up and sent to a gulag somewhere, that the economy is going to buckle, that food supplies are going to dry up, that women are going to lose our most basic rights, and that eventually the authoritarian machine will come looking for me because I’m a progressive, anti-fascist, energy-healing, educated feminist.

Even if my privilege and good luck spare me from some of the more egregious expressions of empire collapse, I’m worried that I will be required to function in a society for which I have no aptitude, namely, a survival society. I’m about as useful as my dog, whose only talents are long naps and looking like a person when she sits upright on the couch. If anything happens that prevents me solving problems through YouTube and mail order, my prospects are dim.

So lately, when I’ve settled down to write my little Substack essays, I’ve struggled to find the words to frame the meltdown that’s going on day after day after day. The horror is stark. I want to sit down and write something uplifting and instead all I can think is WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. But then I remember why I’m here, on this planet, right now.

Believe it or not, we are witnessing a birth. A profound collective healing.

I love to get deep into a BodyTalk session and engage with the patterns that are making mischief below the surface of my clients’ lives—stuff like not being good enough or needing to be someone partially made-up just to function in the world. When I’m the witness to these stories, it’s so easy to see where things are stuck! All you have to do with these outmoded strategies is locate them in the body and bring them into the light. Then they’re free to dissolve. Nothing to it.

As far as I can see, we are collectively going through a similar process.

This planet has been undergoing a consciousness shift for decades now, which is evident when you think about how easily we talk about intuition, angels, frequencies and manifestation techniques—all of which were ninety-nine percent weird even thirty years ago.

We know about reading the vibes in a room, about reconnecting with our Earth Mother, about how we’re walking around on top of a thrumming mycelium network, and about how to use all kinds of subtle healing techniques to restore us to our most vivid, potent selves.

With all these upgrades in understanding, it’s a natural next step for us to begin to create pathways for healing, communion, and functional co-habitation with each other and the planet. We’ve begun to see en masse that all life is sacred, that we’re part of this exquisite dance, and that when we’re in harmony with the Great Symphony of Life there are more than enough resources for every living being on this earth.

This knowing has reached a tipping point that is making the old power structures obsolete. And those structures do not like it.

Everything that must leave us is leaving, but not quietly like a house guest who packs their bags and leaves a polite note, oh no, it’s leaving like a pissed-off ex-boyfriend who smashes all your pictures and tries to get your phone away from you until you lock yourself in the bathroom and tell him you’re calling 911. It’s leaving like a fallen god, dragging the temple down on top of itself. This looks like extreme power bids and inequality and restriction and rigidity and aggression, because what’s coming up underneath all of this madness is—really, truly—a new and more harmonious consciousness, a place where humans interact with each other and the planet and all the more-than-human world with respect, patience and grace. That’s happening. Where freedom is the key word, because it works. When we can each follow our own knowing, the web of life can dance. We free up energy to love, and tend, and laugh, and pursue our joy when we no longer have to worry about hoarding resources and controlling others. So that’s coming. But meanwhile, here we are.

Maybe this crazy bullshit will spool out for a month or a year or a decade, maybe there will be a repeat performance of global violence and suffering, but eventually the current regime—not only of American politics, but of global resource management and our relationship with the planet that feeds us—will crumble. It hascrumbled. We can see through the cracks. Whole walls are coming down.

We’re in the terrifying part of the ride. But if you happen to be a person who knows that our whole experience is being conducted and guided by a benevolent Source; if you know that the end-game is to return to the experience of Love; if you know that we are each divine beings and so is every other element of this shining Earth; if you know that the only thing that makes sense when everything is going to shit is to bump up your kindness and compassion game—then you are going to be all right.

We are going to be all right.

Let’s remember this. You were born to be here right now. Your presence here is no accident. You have the chops to navigate this. You have the heart-centeredness, the emotional resilience, and the excellent sense of humor that will see you through. You are helping to hold the highest Light on this planet while she goes through her most intense points of transition. You’re a great listener, you make other people laugh, you dare to make the things that only you can make—and those are the skill sets that are walking us through this moment, one up-ended day at a time.

You are a healer just by being you. The way you pet your dog heals the world. The way you stop to watch the moon.

We don’t have to work at the world that’s arriving. We just have to nourish it. We don’t have to stop or block or fight against a paradigm that’s ending anyway. Stand up for humans, stand up for the living world, but don’t worry about needing to change things. They’re changing no matter what. And they’re changing for the better.

In the coming age, it will make more sense to trade than to bomb. We will heal from our need to hoard everything and begin to share resources and territory. We will begin to interact creatively and collaboratively. We will heal the toxic masculine that has driven us like lemmings off the cliff and will reclaim our innate capacity for rhythm, for generosity, for self-expression, for respect. I see a world filled with communities that are alive with art and dance and music, where we worship Source in whatever way feels aligned to us, and where we have set up societies that maximize our chances of feeling fully alive.

These are not the end times. These are the beginning times. And friend, it’s an honor to share these times with you.

On Wednesday my husband had a stroke. I didn’t know for sure it was a stroke, but I thought it was a pretty good guess, based on his sudden and dramatic inability to function. It wasn’t wildly obvious, he didn’t have facial paralysis or slurred speech or any of the things I learned about a thousand years ago when I was a nurse aide, but he was dropping things, walking into things, and generally looking like a guy on the sidelines of a Grateful Dead concert who had just dropped some questionable acid and couldn’t decide whether or not this was going to be a good ride. He kept asking me what I just said, over and over. He had his shirt on inside out and backwards. He held his phone in his hand like he had never seen such a device and tried to remember how to text.

Still, it took us until the next morning to finally get him in to see a doctor, mostly because I believed his nonsense story that he was behaving this way because his electrolytes were off. Ladies! When your man keeps losing the remote control in his own lap, it’s not the electrolytes. Bring him in for some imaging, pronto.

All this to say that in the emergency room we learned that in fact he had had a stroke. For the record, as much as I was making a party game out of how many times I could pester him about addressing his blood pressure issues, I didn’t really think he would actually have a stroke. He’s fifty-six years old. He works out almost every day. He drinks green smoothies filled with nutritious-looking powders. He lives on sardines and kale. Sure, I kept making threatening statements like fine, go ahead and have a stroke, hope you’re not attached to using the right side of your body, which for the record got me nowhere—but I didn’t mean, like, now. I meant twenty years from now. I meant when he was old. Which is not now. Right?

Anyway there we were, checking him in at the little bullet-proof window, and I’m trying not to answer his questions like he’s a child and yet I’m answering his questions because he still wasn’t making a lot of sense, and they’re all, we’ll get you in right away, please have a seat, and can you imagine what I was thinking?

Was I thinking, how can I support my husband?

Was I thinking, I hope his brain is okay!

Nope. I was thinking: I hope I don’t have to cancel all my clients today.

That’s right. I hereby confess that while my husband was being ushered into the emergency department and covered with ECG leads and having an IV started in his forearm, a part of me was watching the clock. Because I had a very full day booked, you see. A stack of people on the schedule. They were counting on me to be there. I had made a commitment!

It became rapidly clear that the emergency room people weren’t letting him go with a Band-Aid and a kiss on the forehead. Oh no. Full testing ensued. It turns out that dropping things and walking into things and making no sense while having a history of hypertension is not something those medical people just blow off. So along came the parade of folks wheeling him in and out, filling him with dyes and handing him forms, the works. And as things progressed I canceled upcoming clients, one after the next, thinking the whole time that once we got things settled I could just go in and finish out the day. Once we got to the bottom of this little issue my husband was having.

I didn’t think they were going to admit him. I didn’t think he was really all that bad. He seemed fine by the time they put a liter of saline into him. In fact, when one of the nurses suggested they might admit him, his first comment was—wait for it—but what about work.

Here’s where it gets weird. The hospitalist came in, gave him the low-down and told him he wouldn’t be working for the next couple of days. Days? said my husband, who works every single day. The doctor looked at him like he was a little bit insane. You’re being admitted to the hospital, said this gentle doctor. It’s a pretty good excuse. And my husband said, but I can work on Monday, right?

At that point I put my hand on his arm to stop him right there. What was he, nuts? Seriously, pal. Get a grip.

And then. They said they were working on finding a bed for him. And I looked at the clock. And I determined that I had just enough time to get to work. So I wouldn’t have to cancel my last two appointments of the day. It was way too late to cancel by then! I could make it if I hurried!

I totally missed the parallel.

And I left him. He was fine. He had ice water and his phone. I went to work.

What kind of weird spell is this capitalism thing, that would pervade an entire day of managing an emergency with the urgency of gotta get to work? What kind of mental hold does productivity culture have over me that means that even while helping my husband fill out forms in an emergency room, another part of my brain is calculating the consequences of disappointing my clients? What is it about work that has so thoroughly eroded my capacity to be present even during an acute experience that requests my complete attention? Why do I care so damn much?

Yes, my clients are great. (If you’re my client, you’re great.) But that’s not the point. The point was the work, and the work was most important.

Well. I left him, as I said. I went to work, all right. And I shared briefly with my co-workers what was going on and my incredibly wise friend said—and I believe this is a quote—what the fuck are you doing here? And I said, my client is already here, which was true. And my friend said, so? And then because I have known this particular client for a long time and also because I was entirely unprepared for the profound attention that doing a BodyTalk requires, I just went ahead and blurted out to my client that my husband was in the hospital, but it was okay! I was here!

And of course this client was absolutely lovely. Packed up her bags on the spot and sent me back to the hospital, where I belonged. With my life partner, my person, my guy who has never spent a night in the hospital and who hates doctors and tests and numbers and beeping machines.

That is where I was supposed to be.

Not at work.

Even though my work is good work. Even though my clients matter deeply to me.

Driving back, I could see it so clearly. How I perpetually accuse my husband of being a workaholic, of not knowing how to turn down a shift or a gig, of working himself to the point where his brain literally popped. How I pride myself on having a much better work-life balance and can take a day off and replenish my spirit. How I’m in harmony with work, how I have it handled.

Well, apparently I don’t. Because if I did, I would have cleared the slate from the moment that it was obvious something was going on with my husband’s brain. I had only a twinge of compunction about cancelling a social event I had planned that evening, after work. But cancel work? Oh I don’t think so. Not because of the money, not because it’s hard to reschedule people, although both of those things are factors. No, it’s because of work ethic.

I work too hard and too long and too much because it makes me a good person. I put work ahead of other, more critical relationships and opportunities because the only thing that matters to my overzealous Puritanical doing self is proving to some invisible force that I am reliable, responsible, even heroic in my efforts to get to work no matter what, to make work happen no matter what, to get there early, to stay late, to give up what matters to me, to sell my time and my life force and my energy without serious consideration of what I’m getting back. To show up. No matter what else is happening.

And that’s a little bit fucked up.

Of the many, many things that are revealing themselves right now in this dark collective moment, the insatiable demands of productivity come in right at the top.

I work so that I can satisfy the requirements of a culture that only wants me to buy more widgets with my Amazon finger.

I work so that I can register my value in a way everyone around me can understand.

I work so that I can point to a clear return on the world’s investment in me. See? I’m creating something worthwhile.

I work so that I matter.

What a strange, sad misperception. What a misuse of my life force.

I love my work, I do. But this episode taught me something, showed me an error that is stacked on top of a collective imbalance. I was taught to be this way. I am encouraged in ways large and small to be this way. I want to be thought of as a hard worker, as reliable. I want to think these things will matter in the end.

And at the same time, I know what matters in the end. And being reliable comes in pretty low on most tombstones.

I got back to the hospital just in time for them to start moving my husband into his room for the night—for observation, I’m happy to say, as he seems to have gotten wildly lucky and has minimal lasting damage. I was there to help grab all his stuff, and to answer another round of intake questions, and to hang out with him while he fussed with the remote control and tried to get comfortable in a snare of wires.

I was there. In the right place at last.

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On Monday morning, as I was packing up for an overnight in Portland, I was in an absolute state. I was irritable, impatient and yelling at the dogs. I could feel my nerves literally trembling.

This is not the way to start off the drive to Portland, a route that takes me over Satus Pass with its fifty-mile stretch of sagebrush and winding streams clustered with trees, and then along the Columbia River on a stretch of highway that is rightfully designated scenic. It’s a little mini road trip every time.

As I picked up my coffee for the road I asked myself: just what exactly is going on with me? The answer was prompt and uncompromising: the world. The world was going on with me. I had been reading articles about current events late into the previous night and again that morning. Reading news reports before I’ve done my coffee-and-morning-pages thing is never a good idea (which doesn’t stop me from doing it) but reading news lately has been generating a next-level experience of bewildering helplessness and rage.

Unfortunately, all of this falls firmly in the category of Things I Cannot Change, so I made an effort to quit thinking about it and to enjoy the day. I figured spending the afternoon with a friend making art (the reason for my trip) would be a good time, but what I didn’t realize is how much spending some hours elbow-deep in art supplies would restore my spirit.

We hung out for hours, experimenting with waxes and glazes and inks, making paintings about nothing for no reason. I forgot about everything happening in the world, in my life, in anything outside that studio. I dropped into the clear, quiet space that is my creative center and drank deep. There was no point to what we were doing. We weren’t trying to accomplish anything. Neither of us were making art that was political, or revolutionary, or attached to any agenda at all. We were just…making.

By the time we quit for the evening, my body felt like I had been soaking in a mineral hot spring: relaxed, restored, quiet. It was so much easier to laugh, and to feel connected. That persistent voice that had been waiting for any chance to twist my fight-and-flight mechanisms up a couple of notches, you know, just in case, had stopped pestering me to pay attention to the world, look what’s happening and was instead noodling around, minding its own business. It felt like a miracle.

Then, just to cap things off, the following day I spent an hour with another art friend in her studio. And after that I went from feeling finally-okay to feeling alive, awake, even euphoric. And the only thing that had changed was engaging with art.

When I say that art heals, this is what I mean.

I didn’t sit down and instruct myself to paint my feelings or to come up with answers to impossible questions. I wasn’t art-therapizing myself. In fact, the things I made were decidedly absent any particular meaning that I can see, but that’s not the point. The point is that I changed my state.

When I spend time getting creative, I’m accessing the part of me that remains connected to the ocean of consciousness. That’s the place where I remember that everything is just an experience, that as consciousness embodied we’re just playing with potentials, and that the fundamental truth of the universe is that everything is love and made of light. No matter how fucking insane it looks out there, the ocean of consciousness remembers. We are whole.

When I make art, I open the channel that allows that knowing to flow.

Healing like this is not about addressing symptoms, not even the symptom of being out of my mind with anxiety and perceived powerlessness. Healing like this is shifting the mirror so I can see the bigger picture.

Look: these are crazy days. 2025 is slated to be a transformative year, and I’d say so far it’s on brand. We’re burning off the dross of the systems, beliefs and attitudes that have gotten us to this moment of extreme imbalances. The old guard is losing its power and it. is. pissed. There’s a higher frequency here now, an effortless collective knowing that we are all actually one single being, interdependent with the planet and all her species, and that we are supported, and that we are loved. Don’t worry, we’ll be creating from that place soon enough. Right now we’re looking at the wrecking ball. I hate the wrecking ball, but it’s tearing down structures that no longer suit us. We will rebuild. We will re-grow. We will create, because that’s what humans do.

All of this I remembered from spending some hours with artists, making art.

In this way, art is medicine.

I’m a healer by trade and I will do what I can to alleviate whatever suffering I can. I do not intend to sit this one out. I’m well aware of the actual and potential suffering that is afoot.

But I have to keep myself regulated, available, nourished. And making art is such a gentle, generous solution. Anyone anywhere can make art. You can make art with a stick in the dirt. You can make art by singing a song. You can make art with sidewalk chalk or in a sewing circle. Or you can spend part of a day with your maker friends, goofing off with some paints and a stack of paper. Anything to remind you of who you are. Anything to remind you that you are kind, you are colorful, you are sacred, you are whole.

I’ve been bracing for the end of the world. I’m not sure what it will look like. Social collapse, the end of the United States, food shortages, all the streaming services bringing back ads? It’s hard to know, but if all you need to survive the end of the world is a small stash of tuna fish, a bag of rice and a backpacking water purifier then I’m set.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to write a decent post for my Substack. And why is this? Because there are so many excellent writers on Substack that I’m finding myself going blank. Writers articulating the nuances of this political moment, of climate crises, of artistic angst, of burnout. Writers yanking out their still-pulsing hearts to describe their cancer diagnoses or their neurodivergence or their trans identity. Also absolutely hilarious writers.

So I start and delete and start and delete my own humble contribution. At, let me remind you, the possible end of the world.

So let’s discuss this, starting with the end of the world part. Is this the end? Probably not. But is this an ending? Could be. I don’t think I’m the only one walking around with the eerie feeling of swimming into a deep current, no longer able to touch the bottom. I feel like none of the things I absolutely count on—Amazon Prime, for instance, take-out coffee, heat via three taps on my thermostat—can be absolutely counted on. I feel like things that seemed inviolable at a distance turn out, on closer inspection, to be cheap cardboard props. I once saw James Kirk’s captain’s chair in the Smithsonian and it looked glued together, like no wonder he always sat on his hip because he was probably afraid the thing was going to collapse into sticky rubble. I feel like the world is like that. Unreliable.

And part of the reason I’ve started and deleted a number of posts is because I want to say this, but I don’t want to excite anyone’s nervous system, but also I can’t not mention that the climate seems to have taken a bit of a turn, we have a demented lunatic in the White House, and 2025 is a Nine Year, which I’m told is about endings. So that next year we can start fresh? But exactly how fresh is anyone’s guess.

So, sorry about your nervous system, but mine’s friggin shot. Even though I happen to believe that we’re collectively transitioning into a more evolved frequency, even though I can envision a future that’s harmonious and equitable and nurturing for all living things and the earth, I’m still scared shitless.

Even though I know love wins. But before it wins, what?

And! I have been also afraid to make something that sucks. As if now were the time to be precious about things. As if there’s space for fussiness in this current moment. As if there’s a Great Critic in the Sky who’s gonna be all, nice job stashing those emergency cans of tuna, but couldn’t you have written essays with a little more punch?

Seriously. If there were ever a time to get over myself, it’s probably now.

You’ve likely heard Anne Lamott’s advice to write a shitty first draft. Her thinking is solid. If you write a shitty first draft, you get your ideas down on paper. They’re all over the place, they make no sense, but they exist. They get fished out of the noxious stew inside your skull and placed side by side in some kind of order. From there you can make some sense of things. But try to make all those ladled ideas make sense immediately and you end up hovering, timid, unsure, picking through the stew for just the right turn of phrase before you even know what you’re trying to say. So just get it down. I know this.

But here at the (maybe) end of the world I want so much to join the ranks of the brilliant commentators that I’m freezing in place.

But this is the time to unfreeze. This is the time to just let it rip.

I’ll tell you what I think. I think that being our true, weird, lopsided selves is a tremendous act of service right now. I think that this is an absolutely spot-on time to make paintings, write songs, compose poems, arrange flowers, and why? Because making things is what makes a human, human. Aside from our staggering capacity to love each other despite garlic breath and inequitable control of the remote, making is the thing that I believe keeps winning humans points in the Interdimensional Court of Important Decisions.

“Your honor, they’re clearly nuts. Look what they’re doing to the rainforests! They’re lighting oil rigs on fire! Every time they figure something out they turn it into a bomb!”

“But your honor, they also crochet stuffed cats wearing mittens.”

“Judgement is for the humans.”

There’s nothing whatsoever that I can do about the ice caps, the president, the escalating mean temperatures. But I can by-golly collage in my art journal. I can make an encaustic painting. I can stitch an embroidery sampler. I can write a shitty first draft.

Because aren’t we living in the midst of heaving tumult anyway? Even in the best of times this is still a mortal experience. We’re balanced on splintered driftwood on a vast sea, trying to stay afloat, furnishing our raft with throw pillows and blinking Christmas lights. This life isn’t supposed to be secure. It isn’t supposed to be permanent. It certainly isn’t supposed to be about polish and perfection.

Nope: this life is about reckless abandon. Five-sensory experiences. Rollercoasters, wild raspberries, hot sex, wool sweaters. We’re on this rickety ride for just a moment and there’s no point pretending it’s built to last. It’s not.

So I’m going to make some bad art. Some terrible art. I’m going to allow myself to write essays that may or may not pop but that’s okay, I’m here, I’m showing up. I’m going to listen to the geese coming in off the river while I’m walking the dogs in the morning, snow crackling on the path. I’m going to laugh until I pee my pants a little bit. I’m going to love on all my people. And I’m going to make things, because that’s what makes my life make sense.

And if this is the end of the world, then I’ll leave a couple of handmade mementos behind when I go. Just to say I was here, and I loved the ride.

It’s been a while since I made a new year’s resolution. Not only is January 1^st a made-up time to reboot a year (wouldn’t spring make more sense?), but resolutions are something I can’t even pretend to adhere to. I can’t even make one up. As a recovering addict I can assure you that some crazy part of my brain is always going to lean toward doing the thing that feels the best, the fastest, and that basically never includes doing things like making sure I hit the gym three times a week before dawn. Not. Gonna. Happen.

Not only that, but these days there’s not much I feel pressured to change. No definitely-on-January-first-I’ll-start-this-and-stop-that is called for these days, which, considering the extremes I have run to in my life, is kind of a miracle.

That said, this is a great time to recommit.

It’s always a good idea to recalibrate my compass to the things that matter most to me. Sometimes it’s the stuff I value most deeply that gets shelved in a way that I tell myself is temporary, in service of working too hard/ pleasing other people/ denying my honest needs. This is a great time to dust my priorities off and set them out on the mantel, ready to take on the new year.

Here are a few things I’m recommitting to:

Living creatively. By this I mean not only making things, because obvi I’ll be making things, but also generating opportunities for people to connect and grow and staying open to the constant stream of ideas that churn through my restless noggin. Also it means living creatively. Not stuck in rigid structures, schedules, expectations. Keeping lots of room around the edges to change my mind, to adapt to what the day and my energy levels are calling for. I’m a bit of a feral creature, and if I need to go for a walk, then that is what I need, and woe to the to-do list that stands in the way.

Telling the truth. One of my favorite things about 12-step recovery is that I get to sit in rooms full of people who are telling the truth. I hereby recommit to telling the truth about what sucks in my life and what’s working, about what I’m learning and what I’m forgetting, about what matters to me and what I’m watching drop away, sometimes like early autumn leaves, sometimes like an ice shelf.

Choosing from my heart. Oh, my heart. It’s entirely unreliable, except for the fact that it always steers me towards what feels alive. And that can change! One day I’m guided to buckle down and get serious, the next I’m building fantasy itineraries for a two-month road trip. One day I need to be entirely alone, the next I’m organizing ways to get fifty people in a room. It looks erratic, but underneath it all is a magnetic pull toward my true center. I also believe that choosing from my heart encourages other people to choose from their hearts, and in this way we spiral together toward a greater expression of consciousness, which is probably the only thing that can possibly help us navigate this fucked-up world. So I’ll keep it up.

Staying rested and nourished. This past year I gave up sugar, flour and caffeine. I know, it’s nuts, but the tradeoff is I feel like I’m fully awake for the first time in a long time. (Ever?) On the other hand, it has made me wildly aware of how much I was substituting caffeine for rest and quick carbs for nourishment. I have spent decades slamming a coffee to chase back that pervasive sense of fatigue while living on take-out and things from the Safeway deli. “Cooking” was basically pouring a bag of something frozen into the air fryer. Taking care of my own body’s needs has historically not just taken the back seat but has been towed behind the car. And it was showing. I was bloated, I was exhausted, I was so full of inflammation that every joint felt like it was stuffed with shredded glass—but get out of my way while I make the world a better place! Until, no. I recommit to: no.

Honoring my limits. Which means. No more multitasking. It hurts my adrenals. No more pretending I can launch three workshops and four monthly events without wanting to light myself on fire. No more overbooking my bodywork practice. This is not a resolution: this is an awareness. My body has given me the middle finger on this stuff. I’m a slow learner and will probably need to be reminded, but I commit to at least trying to notice when the needle of my emotional thermostat is pegged on red, screaming overwhelm. I recommit to noticing, and adjusting.

So what does this mean for 2025? A year that, according to the many astrologers I follow, is likely to be a dilly? It means that I am committed to staying creative, staying honest, and staying centered.

Yes, in a world that still trumpets growth and acquisition, money-making over restoration, linear progress over cyclical seasonality, I choose to stay person-sized. I choose to live my one uniquely carved life. I choose to stay lit from the center of my being, with the hope that some of that light will warm you up too.

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Listen, a lot of people aren’t going to encourage you to make your art. Not because they’re bad people (usually), but because folks conflate art-making with a variety of dangers. For one thing, there’s still a lingering notion that pursuing your creative path will lead you straight into the arms of poverty, bumming the rent and living on ramen. Untrue, especially now that AI is poised to position people who make unique things at the front of the pack, but good luck telling that to Uncle Bob.

The people who love you might also be afraid for you because they think that being an artist is the same as being a famous artist. If your mom looks at every doodle wondering how they’ll light it at the Met, it leads to the pressures of expectation. You’ll have to be the best artist ever or it won’t count. Since no one wants to watch you plummet from the heights of hopefulness and posh cocktail parties back down to a life of driving a beater with no air conditioning, the people who love you might head you off at the pass. Tell you that art is great as a hobby, for instance. Remind you of the odds. Steer you toward the accounting degree as something to fall back on. You can paint on the weekends!

Shadow artists, those people whose inner artists have been stuffed into subconscious pockets and suffocated, might discourage your artist’s path because they are so sick with creative grief. Those folks are brutal: the ones who tell you why you’re wasting your time making art. They know. They tried it.

And then of course there are the trolls, who are not limited to late-night social posts. Those are the people who snub you, who offer critiques of your work that you didn’t request, who give you side-eye when you mention a residency you’re applying for. The people who give you the twitch of raised eyebrow when you try to infiltrate rooms where the real artists hang out. These people are like fertilizing a plant with bleach. Pour it on your creative roots and watch what happens.

So yeah, you don’t need any of that. But you do need encouragement, because art-making is mostly an isolated path, just you and your work and your choices, and sometimes you love what you’re doing but often you don’t and who’s going to tell you to keep going when you’re standing there looking at this haphazard mess you’ve just made, who’s going to tell you that it’s all part of the artist journey?

Other artists, that’s who.

Basically, when it comes to looking for encouragement, there are three groups of people. The first sees the life of an artist as a mysterious, exotic world, full of temptations and hazards. The second restricts the term artist to a sliver of people that meet all the criteria, a moving target that can include anything from advanced degrees to real talent to good hair. But the third? Well. Here you are.

The one place you can reliably drink deep from the well of encouragement is in a community of like-minded creatives, all daring to live the kind of vulnerable and exciting life that regular art-making both requires and guarantees. Only an artist can meaningfully encourage another artist.

So let me just go ahead and say it:

I believe that not only should you make your art, but you must make your art. As the man said: If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.

And your work’s not just for you, either. When you make your art, when you put your painting or sculpture or hand-drawn zine out into the world, there’s a shift in the collective. You’ve just lit a corner of consciousness that would not be visible any other way. Who’s to say what good that can do? Haven’t you ever stopped dead in front of a painting, feeling it working its way into the marrow of your bones, your throat tightening with the ecstasy of recognition? Sure you have. And your work will do that for someone, too.

What’s more, I believe that as you inhabit your identity as an artist, not only by making your work, but by showing it and sharing it and selling it, you reinforce the idea that art belongs to all of us. Creating with our hands is fundamental to the human experience. There are ground-breaking artists, sure, but there are also millions and millions of regular artists for whom the process of making is just part of our everyday lives. So let’s reclaim the title. You’re an artist. Okay?

In The Artist’s Way Julia Cameron talks about the creative wound: the place where our young selves held up that great drawing only to be told that trees aren’t purple, or our first solo show only sold one painting, or we got turned down for a grant we thought was a shoo-in. That shit hurts, enough that sometimes we never create again. The cure is twofold. Get back out there and make something, and then surround yourself with people who remind you to keep going.

I can’t make you get out there and make something, but I can sure as hell remind you that if there’s even a whisper of artist in you anywhere, then there’s nothing for it but to make your art. Bad art, good art. Whether you become known or remain obscure, whether you fill a barn with paintings or spend a year on a single sketchbook, whether your stuff hangs on gallery walls or just gets a couple of Instagram likes, make it. Your work can only come through you. Be big, be bold, be beautiful. Make your mark and then make another one.

I believe in you.

This year, as in most years, Thanksgiving was held at our house. We live in the home that my husband grew up in, and it’s still the hub of the family: a family that continues to extend outwards like the south-facing rose bush outside my kitchen window, sprawling in every direction. Brothers, nieces, cousins, friends. All such good people. And so many of them.

Or anyway that’s how it feels when we’re all around the kitchen table, filling plates buffet-style at the kitchen counter, so many voices going at once, children on the loose, the TV turned from soothing music to a Disney movie, sheer chaos. The chaos of family, an experience that I want to soak into my cells while also wishing I could hide inside a blanket fort with my plate, a book and a flashlight. I crave the validation of belonging to the wild tribe I married into, while also trying to look like I have my shit together. And often enough, I fail.

So yesterday. The fail was my dog. Who bites, because he is a reactive anxious border collie who thinks all things are a) dangerous and b) in need of his correction.

So my reactive anxious herding dog thought one of the toddlers—the toddler!—was out of hand, or maybe something else went sideways, it’s hard to say, but the many hours of high-intensity family mayhem apparently got to him, too, and in the midst of otherwise good times he decided to let my little three-year-old nephew know who’s boss, which is to say, he bit him. Which is bad. But then once I realized what the sudden commotion was about, I lost my shit. Which is worse.

After spending many hours cultivating a look of what I hoped was calm collectedness, I threw it all away in an instant with my real-time horror that my dog had just done the unthinkable. And because I have not yet evolved past my co-dependent belief that I’m responsible for the behavior of everyone in my family, even the four-legged members of my family, I flipped. I was an instantaneous blast of shame, rage and panic thinly wrapped in human skin. I knocked over someone’s drink, sprayed F-bombs around the room and then located my dog, who had already removed himself to the back-room carpet, huddled and sad.

And I too wanted to stay right there on the carpet, huddled and sad. Because when I least expected it, my too-muchness came out.

I’ve always been too much. The kid who was repeatedly told to use my indoor voice. The one who thought I was funny when I was being obnoxious. The one who now decides at the wrong times to stand up for myself or someone else. The one who talks too loudly at restaurants, who says the wrong thing at formal events, whose anxiety leads to compulsive over-smiling that probably makes me look like a serial killer. As much as I try, I always end up being that one, the cringey one, the one that might be cool if only I could just keep the fucking volume down.

I’m into encouraging the people around me to live fully. To make mistakes. To unleash every shade of the emotional rainbow. And yet—I want to be the one who has it together. I’m not sure why, but I seem to think I can be that person, the one who always says the right thing, the one that hangs back and then pops in with just the right bon mot, rescuing any awkward situation.

But too often, I am the awkward situation. I walk around with a belly full of emotional embers that are always ready to be whipped into a blaze. I want to be constantly soothed by a tribe of nurturers who assure me again and again that I’m all right, not that it would matter, because I’ll never believe it. I’ll never believe that other people aren’t slowly backing away from me, wondering just what the actual fuck.

It's a hard way to go through life.

I’ve been through years of recovery, years of therapy, years of somatic healing. This is the improved version I’m describing to you. Can you imagine?

All of this to say, I might just have to admit to myself that being a smooth operator is not really my jive. That I’m probably not fooling anyone here. That the people who love me most likely do so with the full awareness that just because I look calm one minute does not mean my arms won’t be waving with some kind of full-body overreaction the next. I carry a wet bowl of shame into every interaction and then pray no one will accidentally stick their hand in it. That I won’t trip on life and let it spill.

But this much I will say. Here is what has changed over the years.

Instead of drinking myself stupid or eating half a cheesecake to manage the shame/rage/panic of the other day’s unfortunate moment, I went and sat by myself for a minute. I felt my feelings, unpleasant slimy fireballs though they were. I prayed. Nothing complicated, more of the variety that goes: help. I let a few people come in and briefly try to talk me off the ledge, and then I let them leave again. I breathed and breathed.

And after a while I was able to go back out and re-join the party. The toddler was bruised, but nothing worse. I was bruised too, but nothing worse. And that is one less flare that can be lit in my system, one less smoldering ember just waiting for the right fuel to ignite.

I am too much. I react too strongly. I am too loud. These things are often true.

But it’s also true that I’ve learned how to regain my balance, how to restore my own nervous system, how to get back up after I go sprawling. I wish I didn’t have to know this. I wish I could be irreproachably wise and self-possessed. And maybe someday I will be. And maybe, just maybe, my failure to be smooth can help someone else feel less alone.