High, concrete ceilings surround us. Damp, grey light from an overcast sky pouring through the closed glass-panelled garage door to my right. Mist beads softly on the crystal clear panes. I hear the gulls perched on the rooftop calling out into the cool breeze, and I smile at the smell of ocean in the air. Salt and seaweed, things living and things decaying. These are the sights, sounds, and smells of Maine.

We are a small group, just six women in total, and our instructor, Becca. I settle in at my wheel, unboxing the starter tool kit I purchased for the class. Ribbing tools for shaping and smoothing, I learn. A set of wire cutters for portioning and transferring, a sponge, a ruler, a recycled yogurt container to hold water — the lifeblood of wheel throwing.

The last time I sat behind a potter’s wheel I was eighteen in high school art class. Anticipation, uncertainty, and dreams flung out before me. Here now, behind a potter’s wheel again at thirty-four, anticipation, uncertainty, and dreams still shimmer in my vision. Some old and some new, at times a little foggy, but present all the same.

Some dreams, like threads I thought would tie themselves into neat little bows by now, stretching out, guiding me on. I place my hands on the threads, feel them taut between my fingertips today. They are not always like this; so confidently leading me forward, from the place I stand to the place I’m going. I’ve found that sometimes, the threads go slack for awhile. And sometimes, I just set them down altogether.

Today the threads are unyielding, full-force, straight ahead.

I grab ahold of them with renewed purpose.

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Becca’s first lesson for us is on centering. The process of adding a wedged ball of clay to the dampened bat of your wheel, and working the clay to create an even, stable distribution before pulling your piece.

Using my wire tool, I pull a small slab of clay from the twenty-five pound bag. The force of wedging, or rolling and folding the cool clay, exposing air bubbles and forming a small, fist-sized ball, holds it’s own somatic release.

A patch of tartan cloth draped over my left knee, I scoot to the edge of my chair and slap the mound of clay as close to the center of the motionless wheel as I can. Grabbing a soaked sponge, I dribble a cool cascade of water onto the wedge and the wheel begins to spin. I lean into the process. Quite literally.

I hear Becca’s voice instructing, “Don’t let the clay throw you around. Strong elbows, strong arms, firm hands.” I do as she says, my body communicating a confidence I definitely do not have yet when it comes to this medium. Cupping the mound of clay with my left hand, the edge of my right palm pushes down on the clay with intention. Before a pot can be opened, the potter must center the clay, bring evenness and consistency to the form. If an uncentered pot is opened, there will come a point in the process of pulling up walls where things start to get wonky — too thick here, not enough clay here, wobbly-lipped pot incoming.

Today, I don’t make any pots to leave behind drying on the shelf with my name printed on a strip of masking tape. Today, I center a first, then a second, then a third mound of clay for the majority of class. One classmate throws three beautiful mugs and a bowl in the same sitting. We come to the wheel with different experience, different encounters, different skill levels, and we make what we can, today. Each of us, arriving just when we should. Each of us, following a thread.

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There is a poem I love by William Stafford, The Way It Is. These words first found me at a time when I did not know the way to go. And they have continued to find me, one hundred times over, when I begin to feel untethered or realize I’ve lost my threads.

THE WAY IT IS by William Stafford

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

I like what William Sieghart has to say when commenting on Stafford’s poem in his book, The Poetry Pharmacy, “When people rediscover the thread that runs through their story, it is often a revelation. They are no longer directionless; suddenly, their narrative has the potential for a fitting ending — or for continuation down a previously unseen path.”

Something about mud. Something about moving out of my head and into my body as my fingers partner with reclaimed earth, and water assists in shifting shapes within my hands. Something about believing in the magic of making.

Maybe, the clay’s first lesson for me is about what might happen when I remember to center myself. To pull the loose bits back to the middle. The peel away the extra and keep only what is needed. To do this as many times over as I need, to keep following the thread.

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I gushed on and on in my last essay, Isostacy, Ecotones, and Healing, about the magic I am discovering in this book. By magic, I mean comfort, understanding, revelation, hope, and remembrance. A call back to the abandoned parts of self. A call back to the earth.

A special kind of alchemy is at work when a book opens new channels of understanding into both your inner landscape and the ground on which you find yourself standing. A deeper clarity of contexts; of the inner world, and the far-reaching landscape in which you exist.

There’s a name for what happens when a river erodes, begins to wash away.

When the flow of the water rushing through becomes stronger than the grip of the rocks and sands clinging to the river’s bed and banks. When the rocks, sands, and collected material from the surrounding landscape can no longer withstand the pressure — the push, pull, and intensity — of the current, they begin to let go of the river bed. They let go of the very banks keeping things on course. Sometimes the river overflows, it widens. Sometimes, new channels form, branching off in new directions. Fluvial Erosion.

A term I learned from the Ruth Allen.

FLUVIAL EROSION: detachment of material of the river bed and banks. Erosion starts when the energy of the water flowing exceeds the resistance of the material of the river bed and banks.

In the second half of Weathering, Allen begins to talk about story.

I love talking about story. I read a book in college that had a profound impact on my 20’s. Written by Donald Miller, the book was called A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. The whole book centered around looking at our lives through the lens of cinema and story: if your life was a movie, is it one you’d want to watch, is it a story you would want to retell? A lot changes over a decade, and not everything from the book or the author lands with me now, but the concept of story will stay with me.

Allen says, “We do not have to choose one story and run with it. We are allowed to slip up, collapse, start again, falter, flow, breach, leak, transgress…you do not need to catch every errant drip of water, and drown yourself in shame; you only need to be awed by your ability to open a new channel” (p. 190).

If life is a river, there will be times when the stream flows effortlessly. Gliding over and around stones, sparkling in the sunshine, gently guiding needed resources from here to there. And there will be times when the current picks up speed, pulls at all you’ve gathered and anchored yourself with, overflowing the banks, disrupting the trajectory, changing course.

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The good news is, what we know about the best stories, the stories that hold our attention and capture our imagination is, they all fall apart. At some point, the really good stories find their characters faced with ultimatums, with loss, with unexpected challenge, a moment when life as they knew it suddenly changes. The inciting incident.

INCITING INCIDENT: The inciting incident of a story is the event that sets the main character or characters on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative. Typically, this incident will upset the balance within the main character’s world.

While Allen doesn’t mention inciting incidents by name, she does talk about how they show up in our lives,“Our best stories often start with a slip, a break, a moment of change. In both real life and fiction it is the moment of difference that sends out a new shoot of life” (p.202).

Wanted or unwanted, inciting incidents or moments of difference as Allen calls them, extend invitations of change. However the disruption comes, it’s what we do next that matters. Will we choose to follow a new river branching out as it overflows the banks, setting off on an uncertain course? What might happen if we follow the stream? What new shoots of life might unfold through the carving of this new way forward?

What a challenging place to find ourselves.

The carving, the tedious, time-consuming, tender work of chiseling something new out of nothing — or something out of the emptiness that was once fullness — not an easy invitation to accept. If we do accept, either of will or necessity, I hold the hope our yes will gain momentum. Allen expresses this sentiment so well,

“One of the hardest things to overcome in life is the holding pattern of inertia — Newton’s law of not moving unless by force — but as soon as you recognize what needs to be done and get going — as soon as a pressure is exerted — the momentum becomes hard to stop. You become a travelling stone” (p. 172).

Would we recognize the inciting incidents within the erosive moments of our lives. Would we stay open to participating, to being a travelling stone.

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One of the reasons I enjoy writing is for the ways it helps make sense of life. One of the reasons I enjoy writing fiction is for the ways it allows me to shift the plot, see the characters develop through their difficulties, change the ending until it feels right.

In the same spirit, would we find the courage, the belief, the friendships and connections which help us write our own stories anew. Would we accept invitations to turn the page and set our pens to work when the erosive, inciting incidents come our ways.

As Allen shares, “Our ability to re-write the stories of our life are the most powerful and endearing tool we have to make life meaningful and workable” (p. 202).

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In case it was not embarrassingly apparent by now, I have absolutely loved reading book, Weathering. My hope by sharing these essays is that this book will find you too if you need it, offering all the magic and more that I’ve found in it’s pages.

Additional news: Weathering is Allen’s second book. Which yes, does mean I’ve gone and ordered her first book, Grounded, and will likely be reporting back on that one too. But wait, it gets better. Allen shared recently she is in the process of writing her third book, and I am ready to receive it with open arms and a curious spirit.

As a person who finds themselves working towards a career pivot from education to becoming a therapist with creativity and nature at the forefront of practice, I am so glad to have found what feels like a kindred spirit and guide in Allen’s work.

I knew by page nine I would need a pen and an open journal to accompany me through the stories and geology lessons Allen presents on the pages of this captivating book. I quickly realized I couldn’t read this in bed. No, Weathering would need to be read at the kitchen table as the morning light poured across her pages. So the ritual these past few days has been, morning dog walk, breakfast, light a candle, pour a cuppa, settle in at the kitchen table with this beautiful book and my trusty journal.

I am only two chapters in, eighty-five pages, and it feels like a homecoming to self and to the landscapes which shape us. This homecoming feels honest; noticing the brutal bits, the fractures and fault lines, the limits and erosive aspects of being human. This homecoming looks to the earth to for her wisdom on what it means to have edges, what it means to set permeable boundaries, and how to approach the limitations we live within.

This week a friend going through a time of upheaval texted me a single request, “Tell me something good?” In response, I shared a lesson from Weathering I had read the night before and could not stop thinking about:

ISOSTACY: the process by which mountains accumulate material under the surface, making them heavier, and then weather eroding the mountain’s surface making them lighter again. Basically, because of the erosion constantly unburdening the land from collected material, the mountains can continue to form. In short, Allen says, “Stuff must be lost for everything to keep rising” (p. 9).

Lingering on my journal notes after hitting send, I ran my fingers over that line again, “Stuff must be lost for everything to keep rising,” I felt my heart-rate increase, noticed my body letting out a deep sigh. I know, there is something here for me, and for my friend, too. Wisdom tucked between these pages waiting to be unearthed. Relief in knowing the ways of the land might also inform our ways of being human.

The land knows loss, knows what it is to be burdened, knows what it means to let go of what has been gathered to keep rising. “It’s not a comfortable thing to shed a skin, or slough off old material that has accreted to us over time. It is almost never comfortable, to change our shapes,” (p. 38). Sometimes we make the choice to shape-shift, other times, like with the mountains, the hard work of changing shape is the only way to keep rising.

Time passes. My friend replies simply, “Oh my goodness. I adore this.”

Allen goes on to say, “In order to evolve and grow we must be prepared to face the erosive aspects of life…It’s the weathering that creates the finest landscapes of our lives, shaping us and defining us over time” (p. 9). At this point, I’m wondering if I want to go back to school for geology?

I’m also wondering about my own unburdening. Wondering about my own rising. Wondering what this past year of loss might mean in a world where Isostacy exists.

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Like a fly in honey I am still stuck on Isostacy when Allen drops Ecotones into the mix, almost casually, as she shares details of an outdoor therapeutic session with a client. Allen writes,“Ecotones — transitional areas — unboundaried with permeable borders shift our connection of where boundaries of impact lie” (p. 48). I pause my reading to pull up google, punching “define ecotones” into the search bar. In all honesty, I am punching the phrase, “define . . .” into google frequently while reading Allen’s work. And I love it. I feel like I am on a treasure hunt where the reward is psychological and emotional healing through understanding how the world works. What magic to weave this web of humanity and the earth together, finding anchor points I never knew existed.

Full of curiosity and wonder I read a bit more about Ecotones and discover something called the Edge Effect:

ECOTONES: the transitional area between two ecological or biological communities, eco-systems, or regions like marshlands, estuaries, reed beds, grasslands, mangroves. Ecotones are the in-between spaces, the overlapping between two distinct places and ways of life.

EDGE EFFECT: increase in biodiversity and density that occurs in ecotones due to greater number of landscape elements, mixed eco-systems, more complex vegetation.

I consider this; ecotones are the in-between. The space between two ecological worlds in which something new and entirely it’s own takes shape. And even as an ecotone is its own entity, there is flexibility within its borders for inhabitants on either side to find each other in the middle and integrate. In the middle, drawing on the here and there of its surroundings, ecotones provide environments for increased flourishing.

I wonder at my own middles. My own in-betweens. The in-betweens that often feel so uncomfortable, messy, uncertain, chaotic. And I wonder, what if some of my middles are ecotones ripe with opportunity for life and growth and flourishing of their own? What if I stopped asking my middle to be what was, or what could be, and sunk down into what is — what would I find?

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EDGES, BOUNDARIES, LIMITS

There’s so much richness to digest in the pages of Weathering. As I read about ecotones and their permeable boundaries, I follow Allen’s thoughts into a story of walking with a client through their concept of edges. Where are our edges and when do we begin to walk them? The client stands with Allen at the edge of a rock ledge, exploring physically the invisible boundaries of what feels almost dangerous, and what feels just exciting enough but still safe. What can the edges of a place teach us? “We are compelled to edges, boundaries and limits,” Allen says (p. 26).

I consider my own fascination with edges, noting how all of my life I have run away to the sea when in distress, confusion, contemplation, or creativity. I launch myself headfirst towards the furthest edge I can find. The edge of the ocean lapping at the sand, the edge of the horizon sinking into the sea. Allen calls edges, magnetic and that resonates with me.“Edges, in many ways, contain within them something existential, something essential…edges are frontiers where we find ourselves. Walking them puts us in touch with possibilities” (p. 26-27).

I wonder at the edges which pull me closer, and the edges that push me away. Which edges feel safe to explore, and which feel frightening. Where are the edges I find myself now — could they be frontiers with something to discover?

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Summer of 2022 I started my Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a focus on Expressive Therapies. It is the most fun I have ever had in school - thinking about the experience of being human in partnership with the magic of the arts guiding us through self exploration and healing. In my first year, assigned readings quickly lead me down a nerdy rabbit hole right towards Ecotherapy, and the role the natural world might play in the therapeutic process.

Allen’s remarks on edges reminded me of a creative idea I was considering during that first summer residency. Under a 30 minute time limit, I was tasked with creating a reflection of my inner landscape. With watercolors and oil pastels I made the below sketches and titled them, “EDGES: the hard and soft lines we draw for ourselves, and how we move around in the world considering them.” A spark I am now feeling inspired to expand upon creatively in the coming year.

As I synthesize the juicy science Ruth Allen is sharing, alongside my own inner knowing, I pause to turn around and look at my process of working through day-to-day triumphs and tribulations. Always there has been art, always there has been a love of, and desperation for, outdoor spaces to walk and observe how to be alive in this world. So often nature shows me something true about who I am. So often my art reflects my experiences in nature right back to me.

A continuous, wild dance.

I am only two chapters deep into Weathering and my mind is reeling with curiosity and excitement. This book feels like the geese in Mary Oliver’s poem, announcing over and over our place in the family of things. I can’t wait to keep reading and following their formation further and further towards what feels true.

This Thanksgiving, it’s just me and Morris the little black dog, celebrating together. Which, Morris feels absolutely delighted about because he is getting morsels of cheese. He rarely gets cheese.

Morris recently developed a fear of the kitchen. The smoke alarm went off to his absolute horror. Now he hides in the bathroom when I turn on the oven or a pan begins to sizzle. This is unfortunate when living in a studio apartment as the kitchen is also kind of, well, the rest of the apartment, too. So, I am bribing him out of his safe haven in the shower with a trail of cheese to help me decorate.

The ingredients for our soup continue roasting, and I unpack another handmade felted ornament to place on the tree. This one, a replica of an Irish handheld bodhrán drum featuring a green Celtic knot stitched across the drum’s skin. A tiny tipper attached to the string it hangs from. Completing this trio of lovingly crafted ornaments is a little white house with two windows, a door, a grey roof, and chimney.

Memories captured in thread and fabric by a dear friend; the year I first traveled to Scotland, the year I began learning to play the Bodhrán and joined in my first trad session at a pub in Seattle, the year I returned from living out of a backpack while traveling around the world, wondering what home means now.

In company with these felted-friends, are a dozen woodland squirrels in various forms — leaping, with a nut, without a nut, sitting on an acorn etc. — the collective evidence of a decade-long joke between friends manifested in ornament form each Christmas. When people visit for the holidays they always ask, “What’s with all the squirrels?” I gladly share the story of a long friendship full of mischief and laughter, and presence even when we can’t be physically together.

Sprinkled between the squirrels you’ll find a ceramic chickadee handmade in Maine, a pair of carved, wooden L.L.Bean boots. A wooden buoy I picked up at a local artisan shop in Bar Harbor, the day after a snowstorm blanketed the pines and outer islands of Acadia in spectacular white. Small trinkets nodding to the coastline that raised me.

Circling the tree more memories make themselves known.

I twirl plaid ribbon and tuck in a garland of red and white wooden beads among the branches. Nat King Cole sings softly in the background.

For all the memories of friendship and family and adventure hanging on my tree, I still notice the ache of loneliness knocking at the door.

I welcome her in, offer her the coziest chair in the room. Oversized, so she can curl her feet up, with a warm blanket for her lap. A hot cup of tea waiting on the table beside her. A comfortable space for her to stay as long as she needs this time. We are well acquainted, loneliness and I. The heat rises in my face, eyes beginning to swell.

I let the full sadness of another holiday season spent without a partner wash over me.

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I have been unpartnered for a long time. Over a decade, actually. It’s just in the last few years that I’ve been dating again, putting myself in a position to meet someone. But, it hasn’t happened yet. And that’s okay. The loneliness and the sadness of another holiday season on my own is okay.

I have learned that while you’re waiting for what you want, you have to keep living.

You have to dig deep into your life, pouring foundation, and building something you love right now, as things are. Sometimes the building is joyous and full. Sometimes the building is a bit sad and lonely. But that is the experience of living and always will be — all of it, everything, swirling together. Life is never just joy, and hardly ever just loneliness. It’s more complex, isn’t it?

In the building of my life, I make memories with friends and family, and capture them in ornaments to hang on the Christmas tree each year.

In the building, I wrap presents for Morris and the people I love, setting them under the bows until Christmas Eve.

In the building, I make recipes that fill my home with warmth and nourishment.

In the building, I play Christmas music and watch holiday films that I love and will likely make me cry.

In the building, I light the candles, make the mulled wine, and bake the cookies.

In the building, I attend the town tree lighting, and go to Christmas markets.

In the building, I walk my neighborhood at night with a thermos of tea, enjoying the holiday lights illuminating the place I call home.

In the building, I attend the candle light service alone, still finding enchantment.

In the building, I buy two tickets to the Nutcracker and surprise a friend.

On cold nights I snuggle into bed early reading An Irish Country Christmas until my eyelids weigh heavy with sleep.

I do all of the things, that I wish I was sharing with a partner. Because, I know it is possible to experience the magic of the holidays and the loneliness of this time of year side by side. This is living.

Opening the stove a kind breath of warm herbs, butter and garlic fill my senses. I set the vegetables on the countertop to cool before beginning to add them to the soup. I unwrap two stockings from the box where they rest for ten months of the year, and hang them by their golden hooks near the tree. Both a warm red knit with white snowflakes and writing. One says joy, the other says hope.

Two things I am holding for the holidays; joy in building this life on my own, hope that I won’t always have to.

Midnight Library follows Nora, a woman in her thirties who has attempted to take her own life, but comes to consciousness in a sort of liminal library. There, she finds an unimaginable number of books filled with other lives she could, and possibly still can, live. The story grapples with regret and the what-ifs of life, offering creative insight into the choices we make and the paths we carve. Confronting things that may be, and things that will always be, no matter the story they are woven into.

I am having a hard time putting it down, and that is a delicious feeling.

For many years I have been swimming in a sea of non-fiction. Gravitating towards books on activism, faith and spirituality, community building, the natural world. And memoirs — I love listening to the story of someone else’s life and letting it crack open my own feelings of possibility, leaving them to scatter in new and distant directions.

December though, this December will be for fiction. For the invented, the dreamed-up, the inspired-by, the something-out-of-nothing stories. I have branched off from the stream of factual reality and paddled my way to the beloved but neglected island of imagination. I carry a backpack full of longing, ready to be swept up and shown something that maybe I knew all along but couldn’t quite understand without the arc of a creative story to guide me.

I am leaning into fiction full-force asking it to work it’s reliable magic of revelation and understanding. Asking it to remind me what it feels like to fall in love. To remind me what it feels like to take big risks. Remind me what happens when we ask questions, and stay curious, and expect wonder as we turn the next page.

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I am also asking—okay begging—fiction to help with the not-so-small task of repairing my focus. It feels gross to admit, but my ability to focus in general has been thwarted by the social media monster. I find myself scrolling without giving pause to read, or enjoy, or take in the images and words in front of me. I pick up my phone unconsciously. I open apps without thinking, pure habit. I have been pulled further into the algorithm than I want to be. And so, a few weeks ago I left the internet.

Well, I left the internet except for Substack. I abandoned the doldrums of social media until the New Year, maybe longer. In these few weeks without instagram and facebook, and the sad swiping of dating apps, I have been reading and writing. I have been burying my nose deep into fiction, and lingering over beautiful essays and poems from creatives in this space. I have been writing by hand and sitting quietly considering. Just considering anything that crosses my mind to be considered. I am slowing with the season. I am doing my bit to reroute a brain eager for quick dopamine hits towards satisfaction with long-form once again.

Maybe this is a lot to ask of fiction — to repair my shortened attention span and reignite my imagination. But I am asking nonetheless. Because I believe art does heal us. I believe books and words land on our skin like raindrops ready to refresh our hearts and bodies and minds. Ready to show us a story we need precisely when we need it.

So, welcome December. Welcome stories waiting to be read…and waiting to be written.

I lost my job unexpectedly in August, and the last three months my body and mind have been in survival mode. A real bummer, to put it lightly.

My friend, registering the exhaustion in my exhale, empathy leaking from her lips responds, “Well, I will hold onto your hope for now, until you are able to hold it again.”

When you are clawing at the walls of your life to survive, it’s hard to hold onto hope that things will indeed change. The hope that it will not always feel as suffocating and constricting as it may actually be right now. When you are clawing at the walls of your life it’s hard to know just how much it will mean when a friend shows up saying, “while you fight to make it through this, I will be the one to hold your hope for you.” Almost word for word, different friends in my life have been sharing this sentiment with me over speakerphone, through Facetime, side-by-side on walks in the woods.

One even showed up at my house, said, “Can I stay here for the next month?” posturing as if it would be a huge favor for her, a much needed respite to find a landing place in my home for awhile.

One month later, driving her back to Boston to catch her train, I try and find the words to express the significance of seeing her everyday, of being able to share so intimately the grief and fear of this season with another person. “You know, it has meant so much having you here,” I say, knowing how honest I want to be, but having a hard time getting there. She looks over at me with a smile and I continue, “Before you came, I didn’t tell you how bad it was, because I didn’t want to scare you. But I’ve never been this close before…” my voice trails off, attempting to quell the tears and the harsh reality of the words rising in my throat.

She looks over at me from the passenger seat, a decade of friendship and history flash between us, “I know. That’s why I came.”

I cried most of the three hour drive from Boston back to Maine, turning over those words, “I know. That’s why I came...” the tangible weight of care from this friend wrapped around me even in her absence.

In the deepest—and silently the scariest—depression I have ever known, my friends surrounded me, holding onto a future I have had a hard time believing in, or wanting to keep trying for. Thank god, for the people who will show up at our front doors.

Thank god, for the hope-holders.

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Maybe you too, find yourself clawing at the walls of your life, doing all you can to keep going. Maybe you too, cannot muster the strength to carry hope through this season. Maybe you think; I want to stay, but it’s just too hard. If that’s you, please know I am carving out a far-reaching space between my arms for you, pulling you close for a hug in the form of this essay. You are right, it is fucking hard to live in this world.

If you are the one feeling like hope is too heavy a thing right now: My desire for you dear reader, is that the hope-holders find you. May they find you through a phone call, in the nudge of a pet’s wet nose, a venmo sent your way to help pay your bills, a ‘thinking of you’ text, a person at your front door with sandwiches and an invitation for a walk. May the hope-holders find you, bringing the connections and resources you need to make it to tomorrow. And then may they show up again tomorrow, helping you make it to the day after that. May the hope-holders keep finding you and finding you and finding you, until you can join them in the holding.

If you are the one with outstretched hands catching the hope of others, tending it’s soft glow until they are ready to hold it again: My desire for you dear reader, is that a deep knowing would settle on you. An understanding that the work of holding and loving is indeed saving the lives of the people in your orbit. Your words, your texts, your dollars, your gifts, your presence, are keeping us. And in this knowing, would you find confidence that should hope feel too heavy for you one day, there are hands ready to steady you just as you have steadied so many, ready to hold your hope, too.

I find myself looking up often these days, taking in the beauty of October. We are at peak foliage here in Maine, leaf peepers traveling in droves to see the splendor of autumn in New England. On my walks in the woods, I stand still, head upturned, reveling in the way the sunlight illuminates the leaves. Golden, glowing, warm and inviting against a clear blue sky. A crisp breeze rustles the magic, shakes up the forest chatter, awakens the wonder.

There are more pauses in my days now to take in the expanse above me; partly in awe at the overstory offering me an art display as well as shelter and shade, partly in a plea for the universe to make something good out of what feels like a big unraveling mess of current life and circumstance. In the midst of the mess, I am trying to notice the everyday magic of the world around me, trying to take in the big autumnal show before the quiet work of winter begins. Trying not to miss the magic of October to the worries of being human. Trying to keep looking up when so much feels like it’s pulling me down.

In my forest wanderings and my contemplative time spent sitting by the lake, I’ve been turning over lines from a poem by Julia Fehrenbacher:

THERE IS TIME

There is time to look up at golden maple,
to consider her limbs all tangled up
with light and life, how unafraid
she is to be naked - to let it all come, 
to let it all go.

Yes, there is time to say no to the rushing,
no to the push to perform, no to the chase
to collect all the prettiest things, yes to opening
the book of poetry, to lingering on a line until 
every last window blows open inside you. 

Might you look up at the sky full of stars and laugh
at how, just a moment ago,
you tried to undo what had already been done, 
laugh at how you worried yourself sick
over whys and what ifs, worried over, over - what was that again?
[an excerpt]

There is time, Julia reminds me. There is time for all that is unraveling to work itself out. There is time to, “look up at the sky full of stars, and laugh at how, just a moment ago, you tried to undo what had already been done.” There is time to remember our place in the vastness of the universe. There is time to remember we are a piece of the whole, we are small and significant, all at once.

Small and significant—that is how I felt on the night of October 10th, looking up, soaking in the radiance of the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, touching down in Maine. Dancing across my familiar little strip of sky.

There is time to notice the changing light, I thought to myself as the creaking dock gently shifted under my weight. There is time to enjoy this watercolor sky. This good, good, breathtakingly beautiful part of being human. I tugged at the blanket around my shoulders tucking it under my chin for warmth, sipped the hot tea in my hands.

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There is time to notice this masterpiece; results of the sun bursting particles into the presence of the earth’s atmosphere offering this gift of color and shape to the human eye. What is out there, and what is right here, colliding in dancing ribbons of light. There is time, to look up. May we always make time for wonder.

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Change around me, change within me.

As the season changes, I find myself sitting in the tension of personal change. Shifting of place and purpose are on the horizon, but the path forward and the final destination are not yet clear. I am taking each day one hour at a time, building in rituals to ground me through the flow of uncertainty; the slow process of making drip coffee, the aroma of freshly ground beans mingling with the striking of a match and lighting of a candle, journaling in low-light with Morris tucked up next to me. A soft waking in a harsh world.

A therapist I admire, , recently offered a thought which I’ve been mulling over in my quiet morning moments. She engaged the same phrase twice, spoken with two different intonations, noting how where emphasis is placed changes how the phrase lands:

Well, I guess this is the way it is now.

Sounds like a hands-in-the-air statement. The way my life is right now is the way my life is always going to be.

Well, I guess this is the way it is now.

A shift of perspective. Where we put the emphasis changes the meaning. The way my life is right now, is just how my life is at this moment in time.

Welcome change, I didn’t expect you, but I always should.

As I sit in the tension of my own transformation, I’ve been journaling through these helpful follow up prompts from Elyse. I hope they bring you a sense of peace through your own experiences of becoming:

What season of life are you in?

What season are you leaving?

What season are you entering?

What is that like for you?

What season are you longing for?

What are you learning from the one you’re in?

What is there to resolve? Release? Remember? Receive?

In the spirit of creativity and pursuit of noticing, I wonder what might happen if we were to journal these questions twice. Once for ourselves, and then again a second time; imagining we are one of the trees humans stop to admire in the peak of autumn. Our leaves set ablaze, letting go, drifting down to rejoin the soil in a final farewell — how would the tree respond to these questions? What wisdom might nature hold for us there?

Many things in life appear to be permanent, but few truly are. As people who write, we know the magic of words, of putting pen to paper or fingers to keys, how they unlock our own self-discovery. As we navigate the changes in our own lives, would we be reminded we are in good company — with each other and with the seasons of the natural world.

i never want to forget / the sound of your tippy-taps on the carpet / the love you have for a booty scratch / the way you stretch out your long-boi body / how you spread your front toes as I scratch your puppy armpits / the intensity of your eye contact / the way you prefer to eat your food a few pieces at a time between sessions of chase around the house / your outline sitting in the yard watching leaves drift away from the trees / laughter arrived when you showed up / the joy you find poking your nose into chipmunk burrows / the way your ears perk up when you hear the word 'bunny' / the drama of your hair blowing in the breeze / how good you are at hide-and-seek / how you respond to the name pumpkin patch / the way you nose your harness to go outside / how you make eye contact with me before you burp / your beach zoomies / our walks: winter, spring, summer, fall / our homes: seattle, san diego, boston, maine /

those ten minutes each morning of snuggling before we start the day / your dust-buster tail / watching your tiny paws rub away eye crustys / how judgey your expression can be / your love of playing in the snow / the way you kick me in your sleep most nights / the sound of your nails racing across the hardwood floors / the way you sit on my feet to be scooped up / your chin resting on my shoulder as I drive / how gently you take a treat / the way you dislike having your teeth brushed / how much you love chicken flavored toothpaste / the way you stick your nose into flowers on our walks in the spring / your aerodynamic body running at full speed / the soft barks you speak for my attention / your love of pillows / your silhouette waiting in front of the frosted shower door / the way you steal my seat on the couch when I get up for a drink / how incredibly soft the hair on your head is / your selective participation / how noble your ears are / the way strangers cannot walk past you with remarking beautiful or handsome / the sound of your breath whooshing in and whooshing out as you sleep next to me / the excitement you display when you hear the word adventure /

how it's you here beside me for the celebrations / how it's you here beside me in the sadness / how I don't feel as alone anymore / how far we've come together / 
how I can't imagine life without you / how I know one day I will have to /  

how lucky I am to be your person /

This is a first date. It’s been a minute since I’ve been on a first date. I am finding my bearings again as I remember all the first date questions:

Q: “Where did you grow up?”  A: "I know I said I was in Maine on the app, but I actually grew up overseas and most recently have been living in Washington state. That's where I just came from a couple weeks ago." 

Q: "What brought you here?" A: "I'm doing a year at woodworking school. I love being a therapist, but I'd like to make woodworking my full-time gig so I'm out here learning some new skills and looking for inspiration."

Like most women I know who are dating, I’ve texted a screenshot of wood-working guy’s photo along with his full name, our plans, a timeframe, and what I’m wearing to my close friends under the title: “IN CASE I GO MISSING.” Friends of single women who are dating anticipate these texts. Instead of alarm, the husband of my closest married friends responds with, “He is fucking adorable.”

We spend a few hours with coffee cups in hand exploring local shops and walking to the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse. Cormorants and gulls sun themselves on surrounding rocks as the morning warms up. Sand pipers appear to be walking on water as they scour the seaweed and kelp beds floating at the breakwater’s edges for mid-morning snacks. A friendly seal pops their head above the waves, curiously observing the humans in front of them. Temperature creeps into the mid-eighties and we find our way back into the shade, admiring Maine’s coastline dotted with small islands in the distance. Vinalhaven’s ferry passes us by, escorting passengers out to sea.

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Meandering through the vendors downtown, I notice a small storefront titled, Project Puffin, with ties to the Audobon Seabird Institute. Puffins have absolutely captured my attention. If you’ve seen one, and you have a heart, then it’s obvious why.

They are an easy bird to love by sight alone; tiny, and colorful, and clumsy. I’ve heard puffins referred to as a gateway bird. It begins with curiosity about this tiny feathered friend, and ends with you traveling vast distances by car, or boat, or plane, searching remote landscapes for other birds in the early hours of the morning. You see one puffin and before you fully understand what’s happening, you’re aiming for a Big Year.

Ali Ward, host of the incredibly fun podcast, Ologies, interviewed Puffinologist, Jill Taylor, for an episode all about these fascinating birds back in June ‘24, and I have been hooked on them since.

Precious Puffin Facts:

• Puffins Sound like: “angry chainsaws.”

• Billing: Puffins rub and tap bills as a sign of pair-bonding with mates, and to show affection with their friends.

• Rafting: Puffins will gather in the water by the hundreds for a communal float during breeding season creating a formation referred to as, “rafting.”

• Wheeling: Non-breeders of the puffin colony will spend hours flying together in figure eights over the colony cliffs in a behavior called, “wheeling.”

• Glowing Bills: Puffin’s bill plates have ultraviolet properties that make them glow under certain light!

• Relationships: Puffins are monogamous and live for around 25 years.

• Tiny: Puffins are only about 8 inches tall and weigh about 500grams. Smol babies.

• Not a Penguin: Penguins and Puffins are not related. Just seems like they should be.

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I ask wood-working guy if he minds wandering inside the information center with me before breaking for lunch. With enthusiasm, he spends the next eight minutes engaging in conversation and questions as I chat up the front desk worker, Amy. Amy tells us Project Puffin has helped raise Maine’s puffin numbers from just two in the whole state, to hundreds through their years of conservation and education efforts.

The shop walls are lined with everything puffin. Greeting cards, wood carvings, t-shirts, books, all depicting the cute tuxedo bird with a brightly colored bill. My date picks up a puffin embroidered dog collar and says, “Looks like something Morris needs…” to which I nod in agreement.

I mention to Amy how much I love all of the artistic interpretations of the birds throughout the small shop. Amy smiles and produces four square panel canvases from behind her, all displaying different seabirds found along the coast of Maine, hand painted in various styles. She tells me this fall they are doing an art auction to fundraise for conservation efforts. Anyone can paint a coastal Maine bird on a canvas and donate it to the auction. She reads the excitement on my face and asks if I’d like to participate, “One thousand percent yes, Amy.”

Wood-working guy and I exit the information center and I carry the blank canvas around for the remainder of our date. In an even nerdier turn of events, I start sharing puffin facts with him, walking the very fine line between endearing and eccentric. He listens attentively and comments on how it seems like he’s been missing out on the bird-scene, and Maine might just be the place to dive in. I chuckle at the phrase ‘dive in’, “Wait, did you already know puffins are excellent divers?!”

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Sciencey Puffin Facts:

• Four types of Puffins: Atlantic Puffin (found in Maine!), Horned Puffin, Tufted Puffin (many in Alaska), and the Rhinocerous Aucklet (hot-topic puffin).

• A part of the Auk family: This family of birds also includes, Razorbills, Common Murres, and Black Guillemot (saw my first Black Guillemot this summer on a sea kayaking trip off the coast of Deer Isle, Maine).

• Breeding Season: May to August puffins are breeding, and will return to the same islands each year. This is the best time to see them, and when their bills and eye ornaments will be in full color! Puffins begin breeding between 4-5 years of age.

• Migration: For the 8 months outside of breeding season, puffins migrate out to sea and essentially float around the ocean until it’s time to return to their home islands.

• Colored Bills: Puffins develop “bill plates” for breeding season — the vibrant orange, yellow, and red bills we recognize. As breeding season comes to a close these bill plates peel off, like a sunburn, leaving their bills a dull grey.

• Parenting: Both parents spend time incubating the egg, foraging for fish, and raising their puffling (omg, puffling). Pairs typically have one puffling each season.

• Nesting: Puffins build burrows by tunneling under grassy hills and into cliff-sides.

• Food & Diving: Puffins dine on fish, and can dive more than 160 feet deep!

Different species of Puffin are close to endangerment or considered to be in critical numbers throughout the Northern Hemisphere due to various factors such as a history of being hunted, and climate change warming the ocean, impacting their food sources.

Puffins are now considered a protected species, and due to efforts like Project Puffin through the Audobon Seabird Institute their numbers are growing. You and I can join their conservation work through donations, volunteering, building awareness — whose to say this is the first man I’ve lured into the Puffin Info Center on a first date — and even making art.

Stay nerdy, readers.

When I was nine or ten, my mom bought me a pad of giant paper, almost as tall as I was, and just short of my wingspan in width. She handed me a fresh set of colored sharpies. Spreading myself across our living room floor I would draw for hours. Music filled the atmosphere. Giant raindrops and flowers, sunlight and tall grasses, beachball-sized butterflies, trees, and ocean waves took shape. The art was a mirror reflecting my inner world to the outside; the places and things I dreamed about and loved, finding their way from thought to created image and form.

Making has followed me into adulthood, thank god.

Throughout my 20’s I found myself painting portraits of people I met on my travels and scrawling words in languages new to me onto old wood pallets I dragged home from people’s roadside garbage (to my two roommate’s dismay). I bought a crowbar and mallet to pull them apart in our dining room. With a staple gun and about a trillion staples I’d reassemble them (no idea why I was not using nails), paint them, turn them into art and line the walls of our home with them. Making something new out of something discarded felt like a way to add to the world as I was finding my own place in it.

In my 30’s I’m still a maker, still painting and drawing and writing. I now write poetry and prose and keep a journal. I learned how to play the Bodhrán and have been picking up guitar. I went through a soap-whittling phase (never made it to actual wood), and want to take wood-working and glass blowing classes. I recently started linocutting and love the tactility of it. I am so interested in trying new things creatively; gaining new insight and discovery as I stretch my creative imagination. Though, I focus most of my creative time on painting.

When I paint, I understand myself more clearly. Often, it is the process itself that brings clarity. The color mixing, the scribbling of sketches, the layers upon layers of media compressing together, the scraping and splashing, the adding and subtracting. It’s the process that helps me understand a bit more about who I am, the world I’m in, whatever is on my mind.

Have you ever looked at a piece of art and thought, “Wow, that artist must have been going through it,” or “this feels sad,” or “those colors together make me think of …” or “these lines and shapes remind me of…”

Art has the power to evoke emotion, understanding, curiosity, and clarity.

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I have been thinking a lot about this recently as I revisit a series of boat sketches I did last summer. Thinking about art bringing us closer to clarity.

When I painted the boats, I had just moved back to Boston after living in Seattle for two years. I was back in a familiar place but felt like a different person. It’s hard to return changed, when so much about the place and the people you are returning to feels the same. My life was full of transition and movement at the time. I felt unsure of my footing.

I started painting again. No plan, just putting paint to paper. Lots of scribbling and abstraction. I tried not to linger too long on anything, out of caution for becoming fixated. I painted on paper instead of canvas for this reason. I could sense I just needed to keep moving, keep uncovering. I was reading a lot of poetry at the time, too. Lucille Clifton’s poem, Blessing the Boats, was on repeat:

Blessing the Boats
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love you back
may you open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

As the days went on and I continued my creative practice I began to notice my abstract paintings merging with the imagery of boats. While painting I would sometimes write out lines of the poem on the paper, or even phrases —“kiss the wind,” “love you back,” — to be covered by the first layer of colored pencil and acrylic wash. The poem became a part of the paintings, and the paintings began to reflect my experience of moving across the country, feeling unanchored. Of life in motion at that moment in time, of holding on to hope that change was good.

Of sailing through this to that.

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In Expressive Art’s Therapy, there’s this theory called “Crystallization.” In their book Minstrels of Soul: Intermodal Expressive Therapy (2004), Barb, Fuchs, and Knill define crystallization as:

Crystallization Theory: “the basic human need or drive to crystallize psychic material; that is to move towards optimal clarity and precision of feeling and thought. When material is effectively crystallized, we experience it as being fitting, clear, right, and true” (p.30).

Crystallization is the natural human desire to make sense of and understand what we are experiencing.

I’ve completed year one of three in a graduate program for a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling Expressive Arts Therapy (a mouthful). Which I like to describe simply as “everything about talk therapy PLUS integrating creativity in the form of writing, poetry, drama, art, dance, music etc to aide in the therapeutic process.” I love this program. I love what I’m learning. I love the idea of intentionally bringing the arts into spaces of healing and discovery and transformation. It’s something I have naturally done my whole life and when I was 28 I found out it’s a legit social science.

In therapy jargon, we sometimes talk about interventions being intermodal, meaning integrating more than one modality (avenue or type) of therapeutic process together. It’s the idea that with each added layer of creative expression — sound, poetry, writing, dance, movement, drama — the participant is uncovering information and being guided towards greater understanding of themselves, their circumstances, their environment. Intermodal practice can guide us towards crystallization.

It’s like the boat sketches.

A layer of poetry, meets a layer of abstract painting (colors and shapes and lines), meets the imagery of sailing ships. I lay the finished images out on my dinning room floor, 12 in total, taking them in. I consider the phrases, “I see, I feel, I wonder…” I sit cross-legged on the floor and begin filling journal pages with responses to the art in front of me. As I write I notice themes. Threads of meaning weaving their way from my heart, to my mind, to the page. Crystallization.

I take a deep breath, set down the pen, lay on my back, let out a loud exhale.

I thank the art for showing me what I could not see before.

And I thank Lucille Clifton for making her art, without which my art might not exist, and my soul might feel a little less anchored, my spirit a little less understood.

Art inspires art. Creativity inspires creativity. Keep making, friends.

Oliver has been a fellow sojourner on solo trips to the beach and accompanied me on dates with friends. She has travelled with me to islands and forests. Ventured with dog-eared pages across state lines and country borders. Offered comfort in the intimacy of a bedroom. Her words have been scribbled over and over in the pages of countless journals. The same poems, telling me something new within each stage of my life.

Oliver asks me to slow down, to be here, to see this, to poke and prod at the world as I know it, at my life as I know it, to hold what is certain right alongside what is uncertain. I love her for this.

Memorization does not come easily to me, yet Oliver’s poem We Shake With Joy absorbed into my mind almost immediately. As if my body knew, I would need to call upon these words as a tether when the experience of being human is so much, so mysterious, so complex and contradictory.

WE SHAKE WITH JOY
We shake with joy, we shake with grief. 
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.

I remember everything about the first time I read it. Clear blue skies on a deceptively cold winter’s day in March. A friend and I pitched a tent on a beach in Revere, MA. We huddled inside with the zip open to watch the waves, thermoses of hot tea and poetry books in hand. The New England coastline sparkled in the sun while a bitter wind ripped through every layer of clothing we had on and threatened to blow our shelter down the sandy strip of land we occupied. Wrapped in our respective blankets, hoods up, gloves on, we took turns choosing a book from the collective stack. Calling out page numbers and reading poems aloud to each other. We Shake with Joy, was page 70 of Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (originally found in Evidence).

Twenty three words, containing multitudes.

Twenty three words saying, yes all of it, everything at once.

“Page 70, what a show-stopper.”

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My first week in Seattle, a city I moved to from 3,000 miles away without ever having been before, without knowing anyone, I did what I often do — I took a walk. I wandered through my neighborhood, orienting myself to this new place and where exactly my feet were in it. Mary Oliver in hand, I ended up sitting cross-legged at Kerry Park, overlooking Puget Sound with views of the Space Needle and Mt. Rainer in the distance. Taking a deep breath I remember cracking the well-worn spine to these words:

THE JOURNEY
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you 
kept shouting
their bad advice.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, 
determined to do
the only thing you could do - 
determined to save
the only life you could save.
[an excerpt]

It seems to me, being human is an endless string of journeys. Less one long path we’re navigating, and more a collection of paths with varying difficulty and scenery and surprise. We start off in one direction, going as far as we can go, when at the end we are met with another beginning. The Journey continues to meet me at every ending with hope for the next beginning.

It’s a cool February day, yet there’s no snow on the ground in New England. I’ve taken a ferry to an island off the coast of Massachusetts and find myself quite comfortable on a couch with a man I am just getting to know. My legs draped across his lap, wool socks and a cozy fleece add to the atmosphere of warmth and ease. He reads Mary Oliver aloud to me:

MOMENTS
There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money away, all of it.

Your heart is beating, isn't it?
You're not in chains, are you?

There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.

I think to myself, he’s done this many times before with many women who were not me. And still I am glad to be here, happy to share Oliver’s words with another person. Grateful to be close with someone who knows poetry is powerful and intimate.

There are many more of these, moments in my life where a poem and its author have been a lighthouse through the storm, cairns to mark passage, guideposts leading me forward. Mary Oliver is teaching me how to live this life, helping me feel through what it means to be human, helping me mark the moments so I don’t forget:

INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIVING A LIFE:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

It was a year full of hostels, tent sleeping, a few questionable border crossings, bucket showers and cheap travel on sweaty busses. One particular journey through the Philippines included a 29 hour bus ride, complete with fussy babies, deodorant-less passengers (including myself) and unsuccessful attempts to fall asleep draped over the arm rest, head hanging in the aisle, as 36,000lbs of metal wheeled us up and down hairpin-turns at speeds that actually had me saying a prayer.

I knew coming home from this year away, a year full of experiences no one in my family or immediate friend circle could quite relate to, would be complex to navigate.

How do I talk about what it was like to live in the African bush with a local tribe? How do I explain the time I ended up covered in goat pee sitting in the back of a land rover, the culprit roped to the roof? How do I describe what it was like to wake up to zebras standing outside the toilet in Kenya, or the sight of an active volcano erupting as I sipped my morning tea from a rooftop in Guatemala? Or what it’s like to attend a Rwandan wedding — absolute magic, I tell you. How do I share the stories of connection and joy and laughter with people from around the world who welcomed me into their lives, and share them well?

How do I share stories that are now so much a part of me?

The short answer is, I just do. I invite people over for dinner and out on coffee dates and share story after story until I feel like I’ve been able to tell all of the new and exciting tales I now hold inside.

Though, what I’m really interested in considering is this — how do I share all the things I’ve seen and done, all the ways I have changed and grown, without forgetting my friends and family have been changing and growing in their own ways, too. While I was living out my life across oceans, the people I care about were also living theirs.

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I felt different coming home after this year away.

My perspectives had changed, my ideas of what it meant to live a life had widened. My friendships and connections now spanned the globe. The world felt bigger and smaller all at once. I found new comfort in living minimally, and new overwhelm at American grocery stores.

When we change, we often want the people around us to acknowledge it. We want the people who matter most to recognize something is different. We are not the same, we have experienced things that have altered who we are in a permanent way. Sometimes, in attempting to share these stories of change and transformation we forget to be just as interested in the people we are returning to as we are in coming across as interesting.

There will be people who see and celebrate the ways we have grown. There will be people who champion our evolution, and ask all the questions about everything we’ve seen, touched, and tasted. It will feel so good to be with these people. They are the ones you will be able to share every detail with, and retell your tales to over and over again. And there will be moments when we find ourselves changed among people whose changes look very different from our own. Maybe they have not changed much at all. Maybe they are uninterested in the ways we have changed.

With both the celebrants and the sameness, we have an opportunity to extend invitations for mutual curiosity and interest. I think this is one way we steward our stories well; recognizing we are not the only ones with stories to tell.

It might sound like a small thing, to be interested more than we try to be interesting, but I have found this small thing to make all the difference in the quality of my connections. I remember to ask the people around me about their adventures, too. We are all living a story, and how good it feels when someone wants to hear the chapters of which it’s made.

When I moved from Boston to Seattle a few years ago, I did something for the first time. I made a transition list. I sat down and filled a page in my journal under the banner question of, “What Will Help Me Feel At Home in This New Place?”

I have moved many times since living in Seattle — San Diego, the North Shore of Massachusetts, Maine — and making this list before I begin the next adventure has been a valuable practice with each transition. It’s a way to tap into my life with intention, considering that maybe this next chapter will require I bring both trusted practices from the past, while also implementing new practices to lead me towards who I want to become.

On my list for the move from Boston to Seattle were the following:

• Find Water: a place you can walk or drive to and encounter peace, stillness, expansion for thought and processing new experiences.

• Walking Trails: to urban or wooded places — bonus if they are wooded or by the water — to keep nature and time among trees and growing things a priority for physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing.

• Write: each day, preferably in the morning, write at least one journal page with no expectations other than emptying all the thoughts onto the page to make headspace.

• Learn Bodhrán: find lessons to learn how to play this Irish drum, and join a local community of Trad musicians for new connections, new experiences, and a chance to tap into the personal value of learning new things. This was a 12/10 idea!

• Make Art: set aside a dedicated space to create, hang works in progress on the walls as reminders and inspiration. Remember, creating often reveals what’s going on under the layers of our humanity. Let it show you how you are.

• Invite Friends to Visit: invite your people to experience your new place with you. Explore together, make food, create new memories in a new place with old friends. Put these dates on the calendar early.

Starting over is brave and courageous. Sometimes we start over out of necessity. Sometimes we are invited to dream up something new for our lives from a place of excitement and expectation. Either way, stepping away from what is known, towards what is unknown can be an ungrounding experience. Ungrounding invites us towards growth. An opportunity to cultivate new versions of ourselves. Growth is a practice of expansion and contraction. A push-and-pull of moving from who we were, to who we will become. Like a flower opening towards the bright light of the morning sun, petals in full extension, then closing again under the darkness of night.

As I participate in my own expansion and contraction, the “What Will Help Me Feel At Home in This New Place?” list has served as a an anchor in times of change, a guide along paths I have not tread before. A reference point when the expansion is feeling overwhelming but I want to keep growing.

As you begin again, know that you are in good company. Know that you are treading a new path alongside countless others who are treading their new paths as well. May we encourage each other forward, sharing our anchors and borrowing from each other through the expansions and contractions.

I’ll leave you with this poem by Christopher Logue entitled, Come To The Edge, which has been an encouragement to me in my many new beginnings:

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge. 
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
and they came
and he pushed
and they flew.

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