A fresh blanket of snow, glittering and wondrous in the dazzling light of a cloudless sky, is the perfect canvas for the start of a new year. 2021 ended with such fragile, exquisite beauty, my heart was soaring with the hope that everything was coming together at last. Then, 2022 began with a painful, jarring reminder that my past lessons continue to repeat themselves. A reminder that I am solely responsible for some of the things I allow in my life. I’ve chosen to live in the grey now for quite some time. There is more context and meaning when…
Today is the Winter Solstice. It’s also Yule, and with the start of winter comes the end of the calendar year, which always feels blank and fresh. I’m thinking about all of the lessons of 2021. Trying to gather them between my mitts and pack them into something round and hard that I can roll forward and gather into some sort of meaningful shape. Some of these lessons are new, but the ones I feel most deeply are the ones I’ve been struggling with for a long, long time. Here, in no particular order, are the ones that come to…
The mailman unloads his route from the box on the corner and I watch him from my seat on the porch. He listens to a podcast, and I find this endearing. I’m on the phone with a new friend. As I listen to him speak about his work with trauma and plant medicine, a hummingbird decides to visit the honeysuckle growing up the side of the porch. This morning, I sat with a friend who recently lost her father. He went quickly, which is always the hardest for those who are left behind. The shock takes a long time to…
I wanted passion and excitement this summer. Carefree, sensual enjoyment of the heat and the full, lush green, and the feeling of wet sand between my toes. I wanted campfire hair in the morning. Bug bites in scandalous places. Freckles on my shoulders like constellations waiting to be mapped by someone’s mouth. I wanted the opposite of last summer, and so, I got all of that. I’m grateful. I have no regrets. But I’m also embarrassed to be writing this post. The last time we spoke, I was heading into fall with a burgeoning relationship to nurture, alongside all of…
Casual relationships are not for me. I’ve been spending time with some truly incredible humans this summer, and through these connections, I’m learning so much about myself. However, despite feeling all manner of feelings, there’s been no immediate potential for a committed, intimate relationship. In the past, that would have been a signal for me to move on. Now, however, I find myself lingering. There’s nothing casual about the way I enter into intimacy. I wholly reject the term casual. I’d like to replace it with ‘intentional’ or ‘carefully measured’. Perhaps even ‘low expectation’. I don’t need monogamy as much…
