The One Where I Learn to Say Goodbye

Sometimes I write things with the clearest picture in my mind of who I am writing them for. It’s like I can see you—friends and strangers alike. You, the one with the red lipstick you just became confident enough to start wearing. You, the one who doesn’t really understand or see the unique and priceless thing that you are. You, the one asking your questions. I can see you sitting there reading these words. And I search my heart, sort of like I am hunting for easter eggs, for the words I think you’d most need to hear. 

And then sometimes I write something just so that I can go back and read it. Maybe once. Maybe twice. I write these words for myself, pretending that someone else is writing them for me. I do this strategically. I do this so that I don’t have to feel like the one who is alone—her hands full of unanswered questions—in the middle of something I don’t fully understand. 

Saying goodbye is one of those things. I understand the notion more now than I did a few years ago, but I still don’t like it. 

On television, they always make these scenes so romantic. 

Someone is always waiting by the terminal. Someone is always asking you to stay, dropping suitcases so that they can hold your face. But the plain and simple truth is this: Goodbyes suck. And there’s no eloquent way to say that. There is no poetic way to talk about ugly crying on someone’s nice shirt. There is nothing in the moment that makes leaving seem reasonable. It’s just hard. And you just awkwardly sort of hope someone will tell you not to go. Because maybe you would listen to them. Maybe a big white poster board with the letters “STAY” written in black sharpie would convince you to do just that. Just stay. For a little while longer. 

It’s the part of every story that I’d rather skip so that I can keep everyone close to me forever. I don’t like missing people. And I selfishly don’t like knowing they’re growing in my absence. 

That’s the secret pain of goodbye: People still have permission to grow into themselves without you. And that feels very strange. And I’m tempted to just say, “No, you can’t. Please. Just don’t. Just stay as you are.” But that’s selfish. You don’t get to keep people, selfishly, just so you don’t have to be so fearful they’ll find a way to live without you. 

And yes, it feels like something in the room is dead or dying. Or about to die. And the scary thing about that? It’s true.

Something is dying. It sounds dramatic and morbid, but goodbye is really just admitting that something is dying. You came together—for a month or a year or for seven years—and you breathed your whole life into this thing. Your secrets. Your fears. Your laughter. All into a community, into other people. You build up this solid sense of belonging. And then life changes and shifts and the whole thing ends. It feels very unnatural to me. 

And yet, here I am, surrounded by expired memories and remnants of a life I once hoped might end in forever. And the weirdest part of all—it goes on without you. Other people enter as you push out. It’s like watching your ex fall in love with someone new. You knew you couldn’t stay, but it still stings to witness all the newness flooding in without you for the very first time. You still see people enjoying what you once had and you start to tell yourself things that could never be true, “I could stay. I could really stay. I could live in the past of this thing. I could occupy this space forever.” 

Turns out, you can’t. It was meant to be this way. And the letting go happens to quickly, as if this love I found after years and years of searching for a place that felt safe enough that I didn’t have to hide any of the parts of myself—a place to call home—has been ready to release me all along. 

And even though I know there are people around me who probably understand what I’m feeling, I still feel like no one does. That’s what happens when you go through something that hundreds and thousands of people have gone through before—you still find a way to convince yourself that you’re the only one. 

Right now, I feel like my shoes just don’t fit on my feet anymore. I’m asking the bigger questions I never bothered to let into my brain when I knew I would see the people I love most everyday, and the freezers would always be stocked with popsicles (which I hated), and the biggest thing on my brain was if I did right by the children I was lucky enough to watch learn and grow (which I loved). When things are good and steady, you never stop and ask: “What is the point of my life? Where am I going? Where do I belong? How, oh, how do I do something that matters in this big world?”

It’s like any other breakup—you either live in the past of old t-shirts and best nights and questions you can’t possibly answer or you let your identity get wrapped up in a space you no longer fill anymore. There is nothing wrong with grieving the loss of something that is perfectly alive and well in this world. And honestly, it’s what you should do. Grieving and figuring out how to let go each day is a whole lot better than stalking social media or leaving the door of your soul open wide enough that bitterness and anger become permanent residents. 

The only thing I know for certain about this whole “goodbye” thing? You have to say it sometimes. You have to get real brave, and open up your hands and release. Fully, fully. Even when you don’t feel ready. And then you’ll probably have to let go a hundred times after that first time. 

When I say “let go,” I mean you must learn to tell yourself, “It’s over. And that’s okay.” There is no need to feel angry or sad or broken (though you probably will feel all of those feelings anyway), so just keep releasing. 

Cry your tears. And say your last words. And when you are emptied out, let go. Please let go. Don’t live in your memories, making tents and tiny houses out of the way things used to be. Something really wonderful awaits you. step into that. Say goodbye because something new is about to start right here. 

And eventually you’ll be able to look back and say things like this: Thank you. Thank you for the things you taught me while you and I were close. I’m doing well and I’ve accepted that I don’t need  you in my life in order to thrive. I can move forward and find myself whole without you. You can do the same. I hope you find everything you’re looking for. I hope this world treats you well. You gave me so many things at a time where I needed you most and it’s okay that there was a deadline on our time together. 

And me? Well, I’ll carry the thought of your community doing just fine. I’ll carry the thought of new people being welcomed into a safe space where they can finally learn to embrace the messiness of this life, and learn how to trust that the people they are surrounded by will always be there to catch them when they fall, and learn that every single tiny thing they do each day to make someone smile or feel understood, well, that’s the most important thing you can do with your life. I’ll remember that my time in that community was a blessing. A temporary blessing that I know will live in my heart forever. But for now, it’s time to say goodbye and see who else you’re going to open your doors to and touch with all of your heart. 

And those people? The ones get you for this next little “I’ll see you everyday” sort of while? They win. I don’t feel like much of a winner in this moment, but them? They absolutely win. 

Now get out there and fly, just as you were always mean to. 

Get out there and fly, and I will do the same. 

Canaries

I read a book once about a man in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Every morning, his wife would pack a lunch pail for him and send him down into the coal mine. It was dangerous work because there were deadly, invisible toxins in the mines, but the miners’ bodies weren’t sensitive enough to register the poison. So they carried a canary in a cage down into the mines with them sometimes. The canary’s body was built to be sensitive to these toxins, so the canary became their lifeguard. When the toxin levels rose too high, the canary stopped singing, and this silence was the miners’ signal to flee. If the miners’ didn’t leave fast enough, the canary would die, and not too much later, so would the miners.

***

At this point in my life, I’m an artist and a writer, so pretty much all of my friends struggle with what our culture has defined as mental illness. These people are some of the most alive, passionate, kind, fascinating, and intelligent people on earth. They live different kind of lives than the ones we’re trained to aspire to. Many of them live lives that include spending days in the dark without leaving their homes. And holding onto words and policies and paintbrushes for dear life. This kind of life is not easy, but it’s often deep, true, meaningful, and beautiful. I have begun to notice that I don’t even enjoy people who aren’t at least a tad mentally ill. I don’t wish anyone without a little depression or anxiety any harm, I just don’t find myself particularly curious about them. I have come to believe we “crazies” are the best people.

“Could it be,” I often find myself wondering, “that we’re not making any of this up? What if we’re just sensing the very real dangers in the air?” I know this world is more than a little poisonous, and maybe some of us were built to notice that. As the world tries to speed by us, we are slowly taking it in. In a lot of places, canaries are appreciated. They’re identified early, set apart as shamans, medicine people, poets, and sages. They are considered eccentric but critical to the survival of the group because they are able to hear things others don’t hear and see things others don’t see and feel things others don’t feel. The community depends on the sensitivity of the few because nothing can be healed if it’s not sensed first. But not here.

Our society is so hell-bent on the expansion, power, and efficiency at all costs that the folks like us—the canaries—are inconvenient. We slow the world down. We’re the ones on the bow of the Titanic, pointing and yelling, “iceberg!” but everybody else just wants to keep dancing. They don’t want to know how broken the world is, so they just decide that we’re broken. When we stop singing, instead of searching the air, they send us to places like therapist’s offices and mental hospitals. These are the places where they keep the canaries.

I’m sure this is why so many of us are resistant to taking our medication. Because deep underneath, we believe that we’re actually the sane ones. We mentally ill are the only “sick” people who believe our magic is inside of our disease. I did. I still do. When people said, “Get better,” I heard: “Get the same as everyone else.” I knew I was supposed to hang my head and declare that my way of being was wrong. I was supposed to get fixed, join the troops, fall into line. Sometimes I desperately wanted that, because living my way was so hard. Sometimes I could make myself accept that my inability to live lightly and pleasantly in the world I’d been born into was chemical and that I needed help integrating like everybody else does. I needed to say, “Uncle” and admit: It’s not you, world—it’s me. I’ll get help. I need to get better. I need your science.

But other times—when I turn on the news or watch closely how people treat each other—I raise my eyebrows and think: Actually, maybe it’s not me. Maybe it is you, world. Maybe my inability to adapt to the world is not because I’m crazy, but because I’m paying attention. Maybe the real insanity is surrendering to the world as it is. Maybe pretending things are just fine around here is no badge of honor I want to wear. Maybe it’s exactly right to be a little crazy. Maybe the truth is, world, you need my art.

***

When I was a young child, I felt what I needed to feel, followed my gut, and planned only from my imagination. I was wild until I was tamed by shame. Until I started hiding and numbing my feelings because my parents told me they were too much. Until I started deferring to other people’s advice instead of trusting my own intuition. Until I became convinced that my imagination was ridiculous and my desires were selfish. Until I surrendered to the cages of other’s expectations, cultural mandates, and institutional allegiances. Until I buried who I was to become what I should be. I lost myself when I learned how to please.

I wanted to be a good girl, so I tried to control myself. I chose a personality, a body, a voice, and a life so small I had to hold my breath to fit inside. Then, I promptly became very sick.

When I became a good girl, I also developed severe depression. None of us can hold our breath all the time. The numbness of depression was where I exhaled. It was where I refused to comply, indulged my sadness, and expressed my fury. I became almost animalistic at night—sometimes in fits of rage, I would beat the life out of my mattress with a baseball bat. Then I’d lay in my bed and quietly drift into sleep because a good girl must leave no outward evidence of her emotions. Good girls aren’t furious or hungry or wild. All of these things that make a person human are a good girl’s dirty secret.

It has taken me my entire lifetime to recover from that. And I’m still doing the work to get there. Self-hatred is harder to unlearn than it is to learn. It is difficult for a person to be healthy in a culture that is so very sick.

I’ve got these conditions—anxiety, depression, and PTSD—and they almost killed me. I didn’t yet understand that I was a canary in a coal mine, passively inhaling toxins in the air of both my family and culture. But they are also my superpowers. The sensitivity that led me to numb my emotions is the same sensitivity that makes me a really good artist. The anxiety that makes it difficult to exist in a world where so many people are in so much pain makes me want to use my art and writing to make this world a better place. I used to suspect that my mental illnesses meant that I was a crazy mess, but I understand myself differently now. I’m not a mess, but a deeply feeling person in a messy world.

The fire that has been burning me up for most of my life is the same fire that I’m using now to add light to this world.

To my fellow canaries, don’t forget: We need their science because they need our art. We don’t need to be more pleasant, normal, or convenient, we just need to be ourselves. We need to help ourselves so we can help the world.

25

When I turned 25 last month, someone asked me what I thought my quarter-life crisis would be. The thought of that made me laugh because I’ve already had so many crises in my life. In fact, I’ve spent the past year healing from a pretty major crash that happened over the summer—a sort of rock-bottom for me, definitely a crisis.

What I love about that word—crisis—is that the Greek root of the word means “to sift,” as in to shake out the excess and leave only what’s important. As a kid at the beach, I remember my grandmother handing me a seive, and as the waves swept in, I’d plunge it under the sand, pulling up a thick, wet mess, but as I continued to shake the sand away, I’d be left with great, sparkling treasures. That’s what crises do. They shake things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most.

One of my favorite words is Selah.

Selah is found in the Hebrew Bible seventy-four times. Scholars believe that when it appears in the text, it is a direction to the reader to stop reading and be still for a moment because the previous idea is important enough to consider deeply. The scripture is meant to transform, and the scribes knew that change begins through reading but can be completed only in quiet contemplation. Selah appears in Hebrew music, too. It’s believed to be a signal to the music director to silence the choir for a long moment, to hold space between notes. The silence, of course, is when the music sinks in.

Selah is the holy silence when the recipient of transformational words, music, information, or experiences pauses long enough to be changed forever. In our lives, I imagine Selah as the holy pause when our lives slow down for a minute and we actually get to take a breath and be intentional about what we just learned and how it is going to turn us into better people for the next part. It’s a giant permission slip to realize that we are not the sandcastles that we’ve built, but simply the builder of those sandcastles. Selah is the energy that I’ve carried with me into this year so far. I had a crisis, I’ve dealt with that, now I’m working through a Selah—figuring out where those lessons are going to take me.

Selah is the nothingness just before the Big Bang of a person expanding into the Universe.

Note to Self

Your body is not your masterpiece; your life is. It is suggested to us a million times a day that our bodies are projects. They aren’t. They aren’t; our lives are. Our relationships are. Our spirituality is. Our work is. So stop spending all day obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it’s all you’ve got to offer the world. Your body is not your art, it’s your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush, or a thin paintbrush, or a stalky paintbrush, or a scratched-up paintbrush is completely irrelevant. What is very relevant is that you have a paintbrush, which can be used to transfer your insides onto the canvas of your life, where others can see it and be inspired by it and be comforted by it. Your body is not your offering. It’s just an instrument which you can use to create your offering each day. So, don’t curse your paintbrush. Don’t sit in a corner wishing you had a different paintbrush. You’re wasting time. You’ve got the one you’ve got. Maybe even be grateful, because without it, you’d have nothing, nothing with which to paint your life’s work. Your life’s work is the love you give and receive. And your body is the instrument you use to accept and offer love on your soul’s behalf. It’s a system. We’re encouraged to obsess over our instrument’s shape, but our bodies shape has no effect on its ability to accept and offer love for us. Just none. So maybe we continue to obsess because as long as we keep wringing our hands about our paintbrush shape, we don’t have to get to work painting our lives. Stop fretting. The truth is that all paintbrush shapes work just fine. And anybody who tells you different is trying to sell you something. So don’t buy it. Just paint. But first, stop. Right now. And say thank you to your body. Say thank you to your eyes for taking in the beauty of sunsets and storms and children blowing out birthday candles. And say thank you to your hands for writing love letters and opening doors and stirring soup and waving to strangers. And say thank you to your legs for walking you from danger to safety and for climbing so many damn mountains for you. Then, let’s pick up our instrument and start painting this day beautiful and bold and wild and free and you.

Ladybugs

I see the first one in the kitchen. “How did you get in here?” I stand there for a minute, mesmerized, as if I’ve never seen one before. She creeps along the counter, minding her own business, weaving in and out of leftover breakfast crumbs.

Eventually, I snap out of my trance and carry her to a tree outside. I place her on a leaf, noting to myself: “That was weird.”

Before I go on, I should provide some context for this story. Have you ever felt both bored and overwhelmed at the same time? This is where I found myself at the beginning of this semester. At the beginning of August, I became unexpectedly restless—mostly in my creative work. I felt this weird combination of stress and disinterest, anxiety and apathy. Everything was both too much and not enough, and I started asking myself some big internal questions like, “How much longer can I do this for?” For the most part, I kept my 3 a.m. worries to myself, not wanting to alarm anyone. On good days, I trudged along, checking items off my to-do list with a grateful but tired heart. On bad days, I wondered if the well had run dry. If all the work I had done for the past year was coming to an end.

And I started seeing ladybugs everywhere.

I know it sounds crazy. This might sound ever crazier, but I sensed the universe telling me two things:

1. Be still.

2. Pay attention.

I saw the second one in the bathroom. I am pulling my hair up into a bun when I see something flutter past me, catching my eye. It’s another ladybug, crawling through the bathroom sink. I watch it for several minutes.

Before you start wondering if my house is infested with ladybugs, let me tell you about the third one—I am sitting at a red light when a ladybug lands on my windshield. Literally, right in front of my face, waiting at an intersection, on an ordinary Tuesday.

That night, I tell a friend.

“I know this sounds crazy,” I say slowly, “but all of a sudden I’m seeing ladybugs everywhere and I feel like the world is trying to me something or life is trying to tell me something.”

(As I say it out loud, it does sound a little crazy.)

A few weeks later, a different friend and I are talking about writing, and art, and doubt, and I think tattoos(?). I can’t remember where the conversation begins, but at some point it turns to feathers. She tells me about how, along her creative journey, feathers have come along as a nudge to keep going, and then whenever she starts to question or doubt whether writing is something she should pursue, a feather appears. Real feathers, artwork on a book cover, a logo on a shoe box—she’s seen it all.

This quickly becomes a thing between us: I start texting her pictures of all the ladybugs I see, and she texts me back pictures of feathers. There they are—a sign for her, a sign for me. Ladybug on the windowsill. Feather on the sidewalk. Let’s keep going. Don’t give up. I won’t if you won’t.

Meanwhile, I start standing still, listening, paying attention. Not just to the ladybugs, but to everything around me: my surroundings, my heart, anything and everything that these tiny bugs could possibly be pushing me towards. Slowly, gradually, something starts to shift. Weeks turn into months and I start to feel a twinge of energy. That feeling grows, until I start to feel reawakened. Alive. One day, I actually feel ready to create for myself again, to follow a few breadcrumbs, experiment, to fall down and get back up. Around this time, a ladybug appears on the door to the photo studio. I begin dreaming…of a new photo project, a website makeover, a professional camera. My head starts filling with ideas and possibilities and dare I say a glimmer of confidence.

For the first time in months, I do not feel paralyzed. The fifth ladybug shows up on top of my camera bag; another one on my yoga mat. I am always alone when I find them.

Be still.

Pay attention.

Let me tell you about the seventh. Early one morning, I was standing in the shower, washing my hair when a tiny idea—a spark that’s been sitting in my heart for over three years—suddenly catches fire. I do not know how to accurately describe this experience, other than to say it felt like a mental lightning bolt. A flurry of ideas appear, one after the other, like a machine pitching balls at my head. I feel dizzy, disoriented, thrilled, confused. But mostly: terrified of losing it.

I hop out of the shower, throw on some clothes, twist my hair up in a towel, and grab a notebook. Scribbling furiously, I fill up fourteen pages over the next half hour.

When I confide in a friend about it later, she responds, “Isn’t it incredible when creativity hits you in the face?”

Be still.

Pay attention.

And wouldn’t you know? Two hours later, on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I notice a speck on a pillow out of the corner of my eye.

It is, of course, a ladybug.

An Incomplete List of Things I Love

I love to laugh. I love the way raindrops glitter when they get stuck in pine trees. I love my showers and pasta the exact same way, blazing hot.

I love baristas in tiny coffee shops and how, no matter what, they always ask how my day is going. I love getting lost in a good book. I love visiting a new city, a new state, a new country, a new anything. I love to eavesdrop on airplanes. I love long car rides alone.

I love the feeling of clean sheets. I love the feeling of freshly shaved legs. I love lighting candles for no reason. I love sunshine. I love when it’s 78 degrees outside.

I love warm, sweaty yoga. I love when I can see a reflection in a body of water. I love sitting on kitchen counters and laying in the grass. I love the sound of dogs walking across hardwood floors. I love when kids ask a million questions.

I love to buy myself flowers. I love whipped cream and chocolate syrup on waffles. I love to leave a big tip. I love saxophone players who serenade strangers in parking lots.

I love when a song comes on the radio that you haven’t heard in ten years, but you still know every single word. I love getting dressed up, but not as much as I love getting dressed down.I love Sharpies. I love cheesy motivational quotes. I love fuzzy socks.

I love when you let someone with less items cut in front of you at the grocery store and they seem ridiculously grateful, like you just made their whole day. I love the sound of windchimes. I love when you find a new thrift store to explore.

I love getting friends together for dinner. I love sweet tea. I love when I happen to see something awkward at the same time as a stranger and we lock eyes for a moment, like “Yeah, I saw that, too.” I love bathroom graffiti. I love classical music. I love how listening to a movie score can make any day feel special.

I love when someone says, “Hey, I feel that way, too” in response to something I’ve written. I love that—2.5 years in—I truly, deeply, wholeheartedly love my job. I love when I have an idea for a perfect gift. I love pretty wrapping, and elaborate window displays. I love room service. I love nachos. I love melatonin. I love when my friend throws his arm out in front of me when he breaks too hard. I love inside jokes. I love smack talk during board games. I love bubbles.

I love the beach, how endless everything feels—the sand, the water, the sky, grace. I love friends who forgive. I love second chances. I love poetry.

I love when prisms make rainbows on the wall. I love campfires. I love when a book keeps me up late at night. I love how I feel in dinosaur converse. I love my shark converse, too.

I love the scent of a freshly bathed newborn. I love the library. I love bookstores. I love finding treasure on Facebook marketplace. I love being invited to sit on someone’s couch. I love being offered a blanket to cozy up with.

I love movies that make me cry. I love shows I can watch more than once. I love Disney movies and I REALLY love Pixar movies. I love motorcycles. I love the theater. I love peaches. I love my therapist. I love when people tell me it’s brave that I got help. I love when someone throws something at me, and I catch it.

I love a really good pair of leggings. I love a summer dress. I love to hike. I love curious people. I love tattoos. I love a high maintenance routine. I love a low maintenance personality. I love anything written by Mary Oliver. I love decorating walls with my photos. I love the way squirrels eat fruit with their hands like humans.

I love Voxer. I love my Facebook writing group. I love the sound of another person’s heart beating. I love when someone, anyone, tells a bad joke and someone else laughs. I love the ocean. I love who I am on vacation. I love hot chocolate with whipped cream and peppermint on top. I love finding the perfect song at the perfect time. I love foaming hand soap (one of the greatest inventions of our time!) I really do love to vacuum. I love to water my plants.

I love the color of my eyes, and the color of yours (eyes in general, what a masterpiece). I love Manchester, Tennessee. I love balsamic vinegar. I love Christmas lights on cacti. I love horses, just like I did when I was a kid. I love when a dog falls asleep in your lap. I love when a dog jumps on me. I love when a dog wakes me up by licking my face. I love when a dog pushes their head under my arm, shamelessly asking for attention. I love friends who let me love their dogs. I love how dogs seem to know when I’m sad, how they shove their nose into my lap as if to say, “Here, pet me. it helps with the sadness.”  I LOVE dogs, just every single thing about them.

I love putting on my paint-stained sweatshirt. I love the way kids laugh like there is joy exploding out of them. I love pink carnations. I love when I’m hiking somewhere obscure and come across a bench. I always think, “I love that someone thought to put a bench there.” I love when I feel like there is so little time left-all of it matters. I love when I feel like there is so much time left-none of it matters.

I love taking pictures of shadows. I love donuts any time of day. I love when I get the giggles in a place where it’s really not appropriate to have the giggles. I love my weighted blanket. I love when you pull up next to a car at a red light and the person inside is FEELING the music.

I love having sisters. I love being cooked for. I love the way my best friend still calls me by my childhood nickname. I love everything, and I mean everything, about Christmas. I love New Years. I love fresh starts. I love the midnight hour.

I love the smell of eucalyptus. I love when ice cream melts on top of a how brownie and makes ice cream soup. I love making friends on the internet. I love a good recommendation. I love freckles. I love nostalgia. I love cliffhangers. I love to follow sunlight around like a cat. I love to stretch.

I love going through the carwash when I’m not driving. I love when the sky looks like cotton candy. I love to jump on trampolines. I love when friends know you well enough to tell you no. I love when applause spurs an encore. I love old people holding hands.

I love finding money in my pocket. I love getting a really great parking spot on a rainy day. I love Aperture magazine. I love standing around a kitchen island pretending to be useful.

I love taking photos. I love shooting until my feet hurt. I love quietly riding on an elevator with a group of people going different places. I love swaying in a hammock. I love when people wear babies strapped to their chest. I love when little kids smile at themselves in a mirror, truly delighted by their own appearance.

I love cannolis. I love a new sweater. I love twinkle lights. I love quality dark chocolate. I love the color yellow. I love sleeping newborns. I love the sound of typing on a keyboard. I love the look on my sister’s face when she opens a jar I couldn’t.

I love anticipation. I love love. I love taking pictures of people who are smiling when they have no idea I’m capturing them. I love that, not that long ago, I lost a race to a bunch of little kids. I love that I genuinely did not let any of them win.

I love ripples. I love when authors put things into words that I haven’t been able to express. I love when the leaves change and the leaves turn different colors. I love Justin Bieber’s Christmas album. I love when you trim a plant down to the roots and it grows back bigger and better than before. I love a good metaphor.

I love finding the perfect gif. I love when my inbox is less than 10. I love when someone buys you a gift simply because they saw it and though of you.

I love when I’m babysitting my cousins and they paint my nails different colors I love to learn. I love the permission to change my mind. I love when someone calls me just to check in. I love puzzles. I love riding bikes.

I love a good gallery wall. I love a sprinkle of powdered sugar. I love adding just a little bit more butter. I love standing in a crowded place (like Times Square) and thinking about how incredibly loved each one of us is.

I love waking up before anyone else. I love being home alone. I love getting rid of things. I love a good choice of snacks. I love handwritten notes. I love being in the company of people who champion one another. I love pep talks. I love being sore after a work out. I love sleeping in on a Sunday.

I love when a friend suggests a writing prompt like this one to get me out of my creative rut and past my own fears. I love that I can’t stop thinking about how many things I love. I love that there are a thousand more things I could add to this list.

I love, I love, I love. I could go on, but perhaps I’ll just stop here: with love, and being loved.

I love(d) writing this.

A Little Bit Shattered

I am sitting in my car wearing a mask, making my way through a series of orange cones in a parking lot that previously housed the state fair. The last time my car touched these grounds, I ventured out for an evening of carnival rides, popcorn, farm animals, and live music. This was back, of course, when herds of people would gather in the name of cotton candy and Ferris wheels, nary a mask in sight.

Last time I was here, I ate a corn dog. Oddly enough, it is 8:45am and a corn dog sounds pretty good right now.

A snake-like trail of orange traffic cones directs cars through a handful of “stations”—masked professionals sitting on folding chairs holding iPad-like devices. At the initial stop, I present my vaccine card to a young woman with impressive eyelashes who records my name and birthdate into her tablet.

“How are you doing today?” She asks in a bubbly, upbeat tone. Is she a nurse? A volunteer? What kind of qualifications do you need to work at a parking lot vaccine clinic?

She directs me forward, gesturing with her hand the general direction I need to drive until I get inside a covered warehouse. I know the drill. I did this three weeks ago.

At the next station, another woman greets me with crinkly eyes, smiling behind her mask.

“See that guy with the light saber? You’re going to pull into aisle four.”

I follow her finger to the young man waving me into a cone-outlined lane, using a flashlight. I pull up to the designated spot, put my car in park, and turn it off.

Two women meet me at the car door, and ask me to pass my vaccination card and ID through the window. I am asked all of the same questions I was asked last time.

Are you sick?

Have you ever tested positive for COVID?

Do you have any known allergies to vaccines?

Do you have blood clotting disorders?

Do you have derma fillers?

Are you pregnant or breastfeeding?

I answer every question, and with one last punch punch into her tablet, the woman peppering me with questions nods at the woman who is already rolling up the sleeve of my shirt.

She wipes alcohol over my skin and asks if I’m ready.

I nod yes, feel the sting, and within two seconds, it is over.

“You did it!” She tells me, excitedly, as if I’m a two-year-old who just went to the bathroom on the potty for the first time.

I roll my sleeve down. She whips out a marker and writes some kind of code on my windshield, waving me through the exit with a simple, “Have a great day!”

I slowly drive out of the warehouse, and into the waiting zone where I need to be monitored for the next 15 minutes. I put my car in park again, and look around at the other dozen cars in the lanes next to me. I wonder about the people in these cars: who they are, what they do for a living, what the past year has been like for them. I marvel at how easy this was, driving through a parking lot, never once getting out of my car, being injected with a vaccine where I used to eat corn dogs.

What did it take to pull this off? How did we do it so fast?

In a state of emergency, the red tape and bureaucracy just…went away. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What else could we do? Who else could we help? What would happen if we started serving hot meals, passing out bottles of water and clean socks and medicine and therapy to those who need it most? What would happen if we harnessed our collective energy and resources toward morphing theme parks into triage centers more often?

…

I thought I’d be delighted to hear that vaccinated people don’t have to wear a mask anymore, ecstatic to see smiles again.

But instead of feeling delighted, I feel cynical. We’re supposed to use…the honor code? After this past year? After all the conspiracy theories, the insurrection, the fake news, the contested election? We’re just supposed to…trust our fellow Americans?

A few months ago, when the mask mandate was still 100% in effect, I went to the mall to make a return. I walked in among a handful of other people, including a man not wearing a mask. He was tan, and muscular, wearing a bright blue tank top. For the sake of this story, I’ll call him Chad.

A pretty twenty-something stood at the entrance of Nordstrom, holding a tray of masks in one hand and a plastic tong in the other, like a cater-waiter serving hor devours at a wedding.

Upon spotting Chad, she kindly said, “Sir, you need to wear a mask to enter the mall.”

Without flinching, he threw his hand up in her face, said, “No thanks, I’m good,” and kept walking.

I could tell she was caught off guard, as were others watching this scene unfold, but she kept her composure and said again, this time more sternly: “Sir, you cannot come into the store without a mask.”

At this point, Chad had already passed her. He whipped his head around with an arrogant smirk and repeated his line, “No thanks, I’m good.”

And just like that, he disappeared into the rest of the shoppers, breathing his germs and his privilege all over the mall.

I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. The audacity. The smugness. I thought of my friend’s immunocompromised daughter, who has already spent part of her life in the ICU. I thought of my other friend, fighting cancer, the kid at camp who has a heart condition, my own great-grandmother in her nineties. I thought of recent data showing how racial and ethnic minority groups are being disproportionately affected by covid.

Half a million people have died in the United States alone. And there goes Chad into the mall, pretension all over his maskless face, en route to Lululemon for more tanks.

We’re supposed to abide by the honor code with that guy?

I am a cynic by nature, but I keep thinking I am coming out of this pandemic okay. And I am okay. My family is healthy. I still have my job. I am grateful for the things that are returning to normal. But the day the mask mandate changed, hinging on the honor code, I thought of Chad and I thought of the election and I thought of white nationalists storming the capitol and I realized, maybe I’m not as okay as I thought. Maybe I’m coming out of this pandemic a little bit shattered inside.

…

I drive straight from the vaccine clinic to the grocery store because I am out of lemons and cheez-its and basically everything, and I want to grab some things before my arm starts to hurt.

Right outside Kroger is a wooden stand holding a variety of plants. Without giving it much thought, I grab four—three succulents and some basil. Inside the store I put milk and bagels in my basket, oranges and butter. I get a new candle, too, a post-vaccine present to myself.

At the checkout counter, an old lady gets in line behind me. For the sake of this story, I’ll call her Agnes. I smile at her from behind my mask, noticing a sparkly barrette clipped in her white hair. It’s gold and glittery, like something you’d wear to the prom. But we’re not at the prom, we’re at the grocery store on a random weekday, and she’s paired this accessory with black cropped pants, a teal hoodie, a pink tie-dye mask, and sneakers.

Agnes—who, by my best calculation, is 80-something years old—recognizes the cashier swiping my food across the counter. They start chatting like old friends, and it becomes clear to me this is a routine of sorts. She must shop here often, maybe on the same day each week, and always stands in this line.

I stay quiet while they catch up, watching Agnes adjust the yellow flowers in her cart and wave her hands around telling a story of how she recently got stuck at the airport. She laughs loudly through her mask, overjoyed to be standing in this grocery store on a sunny Wednesday morning with a gaudy clip in her hair. If she is cynical at anything or anyone, it does not show.

She seems delighted to be alive.

….

Back in the car, a song comes on the radio:

“Oh it’s gonna be okay, with a little bit of hope

Oh it’s gonna be okay with a little bit of grace”

It’s a catchy tune that gets stuck in my head for the rest of the day. At home, I unload the groceries and water the plants, lining them up on the windowsill.

Later, I start to feel sick. With a sore arm and pounding headache, I climb into bed at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and stay there until dinner. I fall in and out of sleep, waking just in time to hear my neighbor’s TV say, “It’s life’s little twists and turns and bumps and bruises that make you who you are.”

For the next 24 hours, I am fatigued and nauseous. School work piles up in my inbox, dishes pile up in my sink. I feel terrible, and I feel guilty for feeling terrible, knowing there are a hundred things I need to be doing besides being curled up under my weighted blanket.

At some point, Boston wanders down to my bedroom. He stands in the doorway, studying the scene of me lying in bed in the middle of the day. He leaves, but a few minutes later, he is back with the stuffed wolf I bought him. He drops it onto my bed and uses his nose to push it into me. Then he licks my face and walks back up the stairs.

The gesture is so sweet, so intuitive for a dog, I almost cry.

I’ve never felt so loved in all my life.

…

It takes a full 48 hours for me to feel like myself again. As soon as I do, I venture into the backyard sun to read. Boston joins me.

I throw a ball for him and as I watch him run, I marvel again at the life-saving vaccine I’ve just received in a place where I used to eat corn dogs. I think of the plethora of miracles and disappointments I’ve witnessed over the past year, the emotional roller coaster we’ve all been on. I think of the vast humanitarian crises happening all over the world—the wars and famine and sex trafficking and lack of clean drinking water—and how only in America could we turn something as simple as fabric stretched over our faces into something to fight over.

I think of Agnes in Kroger, with her Snow White hair and sparkly barrette and tie-dye mask. If I make it to my eighties, I hope to be like her: friendly with the cashier I see every week, rocking a jazzy clip in my hair, joy radiating out of my face because I’m delighted to be alive.

Boston lays down and puts his head in my lap. I rest my own head on the tree behind me as I pet him, humming:

Oh it’s gonna be okay, with a little bit of hope

Oh, it’s gonna be okay with a little bit of grace

To Remain in Existence

Early last year, one of my friends asked me to sign up for a semester-long yoga class with her. Before I even knew if the class would fit into my schedule, I was grabbing my yoga mat and tying my hair up into a bun.

I agreed to do this class with her for the simple reason that I didn’t like yoga. Not even a little bit. The breathing. The stillness. The presence. All of it made me nauseous and panicky.

I walked into many of those early classes hopeful and optimistic that it would be the day I fell in love with yoga. When I became one of those people who can’t go a day without getting on the mat and knocking out a few downward dogs.

The pattern was always the same though: I was only on my mat for 10 minutes before wishing the class would hurry up and end already. So, it could make you wonder: Why spend the money? Why take the class? If you already know you’ll hate it, why go?

Plain and simple: Just because I don’t feel like doing something isn’t reason enough not to do it. There’s a mountain of things in my life that I don’t feel like doing and I do them anyway. Yoga is just a 90-minute reminder that if I push past my feelings then something better will win.

My friend ended up dropping the class during the first week. She told me she hated how much the teacher talked, that she was more of a “music person,” but I liked that she was constantly reminding us not to quit. I need positive voices to help combat the inner critic that lives in my brain.

One day I am sitting in child’s pose when my teacher starts talking about endurance, how with every breath I take and every posture I hold longer than I thought I could, I am stretching my capacity.

The thing is, endurance isn’t what I thought it was all these years. I’ve always associated endurance with top athletes, with the ones who win the races. When I picture endurance, I think about being the best. I thought it meant ruling the day or being the last one standing. But that’s not what endurance means. The definition of endurance, as my yoga teacher informs me, is “to remain in existence.”

To remain in existence. That’s the real meaning.

To continue or last. To not melt into the darkness. To not give up on the fight. To keep going, even if it means the only thing you do today is get out of bed and put on some shoes. Some days the victory is the shoes; other days, it’s the pants.

Where I thought endurance meant you outlasted everyone, I got it all wrong. Endurance means you go on living. You experience hard days, days that don’t go as you planned them to, but you know in your core that the fight is not over for good. You go to sleep. You lay your tired head down. You wake up. And you try again. This is endurance—trying again, against all odds.

It wasn’t until I experienced depression that I realized the whole “just be stronger” and “wake up and rule the day” mentality doesn’t always work. It doesn’t mean you have to bow down to your circumstances or forge an identity out of your weaknesses, but it does mean that there will be a lot of days that don’t feel as empowering as a Nike commercial. There will be plenty of days when you “just do it” and feel nothing at all. And there will be other days for naps and grace and courage to just say, “We will try this again tomorrow.”

Some days, you may wake up and though there seems to be nothing wrong, anxiety will be knotted in your chest. Some days you will wake up to darkness—it will be waiting there at the foot of your bed, eagerly anticipating when you’ll try to rise—and it will follow you throughout the day. It will hover.

I don’t say this to discourage you or to make you want to give up. I share it with you to be honest that some days feel like the darkness is winning, and yet you must know that the darkness cannot have the final word in your life.

When the whole world sounds like a drill sergeant making you feel like you need to do more, produce more, eat less, burn more, try harder, and speak louder, it’s okay to clear out the noise and just be. Just be. It’s okay to do what you can and stack up the small victories—what personally feels big to you—at the end of a long day. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to feel a little lost. These kinds of days matter too.

It is so often in the most unexpected elements that we find meaning in our lives. I have repeatedly had to learn this in my own story when people I thought were going to show up for me didn’t. They were nowhere to be found. They were either turned off or scared away by the depths of the depression, and I get it. I wasn’t angry. I understood, because suffering isn’t pretty to look at. But where the void was felt, others arrived. Unexpected people—people I would have never guessed would be the ones to check in on me, held me up, or sat beside me to listen.

Turns out, life didn’t want to stick to the map I had made to bring about my healing. There were detours I had to take. There were people that needed to be introduced into my story—people I would have never paid attention to if everything in life had been going just fine. Life had the most unlikely people and things ready to come and find me.

Maybe that’s you right now. You’ve spent some time on the bathroom floor. You feel like you’ve come to the end of yourself. You can no longer muster up the strength and just get better. Here’s what I am begging you to do: Tell someone about it. Be honest with them. Don’t let shame or fear or what someone might think keep you from being honest about where you are on the map. We cannot expect people to show up for us if we don’t first tell them we are in need.

After you let someone in, remember this moment. Take a mental picture of it. Remember the view. You won’t be in this place forever.

Because when you know stories about the dark, you become a light to others. You get to show them the way. You get to sit on the floor with people or on the other end of the phone, not saying a word because you know words can’t change the present pain. You get to help others remain in existence, as you decide to remain in existence with them.

New songs are born on the bathroom floor all the time. New songs are born as you put your hands on the floor and push yourself up, shaking as you stand. And nothing, nothing feels more glorious and life-giving than the moment you discover you’re standing for the first time in what seems like a very long while.

You may not see it right now, but something bigger is happening. Something is hatching in your spirit, and it’s the kind of thing that won’t soon go away. It’s a new room, a new part of you. And from now on, you’re going to be able to take people there, and you’ll have new strength to sit with them in their empty times. You are going to be one of the unlikely who show up for someone else’s rock bottom.

During those times, when it feels like all you’re doing is remaining in existence, I know how easily the fear can sweep in and tell you you’re making no progress and you’re all alone.

In those times, when the fear wants to plug up your ears, look up. If you only have the strength to do one thing, look up. That’s all. Whether you see it or not, there are tiny, beautiful things all around you. Life may not look the way you wanted it to look. It may not feel the way you wanted it to feel. But it is still happening. Train your eyes to see the beauty in that. Train your eyes to look for that beauty and seek it out. Every single day, something new to see.

It’s okay if you can’t stand up on your feet and shout with joy, but I would tell you to pull out a notebook and scribble down all the beautiful things you see each day—the unlikely things showing up for you. I feel pretty strongly about this part—about writing this down instead of trying to keep it all in your mind. We forget too easily. We move on too quickly. When you write something down, you solidify it. You give yourself something to go back to, something to remember when the darkness gets thicker. When you declare goodness in the midst of pain and suffering, you forge a fight song in the wilderness that cannot be taken away from you. You become someone who offers light when the world expects you to succumb to the darkness and give up.

You’ll be amazed as you start to see the beautiful things show up, day after day, in the most unexpected forms. People you haven’t talked to in years. Cups of tea. Friends who pray. The taste of food after you’ve spent a long time not tasting anything at all. A full night of sleep. A good therapy session. Petting puppies. These are the things that pull me back together when I am in the dark. I have stopped needing to be completely out of the woods and just realized that there is purpose here, too. I am slowly learning to trust others. I am learning to depend on people.

A walk around the neighborhood. A fresh summer breeze. Blankets and good company. Clarity. A book that speaks deeply and powerfully after a long drought. All of those things are beautiful. They are coming into the darkness to provide you with some light.

One day, you’ll want to remember these things. The cracks in the ceiling where the light poured through. One day, this beauty will be evidence that you came through the long woods and walked out better than before.

One day, because of what you’ve seen with your own two eyes, you’ll be able to grab someone else by the hand, squeeze it tight, and say, “count the tiny, beautiful things. Whether you believe it or not, there is goodness here.”

The Poetry of Broken Wings

When the four year old I was babysitting, Sawyer, dragged a dead tree branch into the yard last fall, I didn’t expect that the story would end with a broken-winged monarch butterfly living in the kitchen for 18 days, but then again, 2020 wasn’t the year for predictable storylines, was it?

Sawyer was the one who spotted the bright green chrysalis first, but I’ll take credit for suspecting it to be a monarch. The green shell was flecked with sparkling gold, and I couldn’t possibly imagine anything else could possibly reside inside. We looked it over for a few minutes, and then, carefully, I pulled the branch over toward the house and propped it up next to the garage.

Fully invested in this tiny piece of life, I stopped by it at 5:45 the next morning on my way in to check on it. The cocoon has thinned, and I could see the black and orange wings within. When their mom left for work an hour later, I called down the stairs, “Look at the chrysalis before you leave!”

She came back in about 30 seconds later. “You’re going to want to come see this,” she said. The kids and I hurried outside to find our monarch hatched and sitting still on the tree branch.

The kids were instinctively excited, but my first glance gave me pause: Only one of her wings was fully straight; the other was crumpled. I cocked my head and furrowed my eyebrows, and their mom said, “I’m sure it will straighten out. Just give it some time.” I wasn’t so sure.

My google search history for the rest of the morning tracked her progress:

How long does it take monarch wings to straighten?

Will a crumpled monarch wing ever straighten?

Can you straighten a butterfly wing?

How long do butterflies live?

How long do butterflies with broken wings live?

At some point that afternoon, Sawyer and I went outside to check on her, and her one food wing was frantic. It fluttered furiously, but all she could do was hop around on the branches of that dead branch. “Hey sawy,” I said as I reached down and let her crawl onto my finger. “Let’s move her somewhere greener where she’ll have better food to eat.” Which was the kid-sized translation of “I can’t bare to watch her any longer.” Together, we moved her to a small bush on the side of the yard, and as I turned my back and walked toward the house, I figured she’d get eaten by a bird. At least I would no longer have to see her struggle.

For the rest of the day, I pretended I was unfazed by the little bug, but the truth was, I thought about her constantly. She had emerged from her cocoon to a world she was not equipped to live in. There was no one to help her; she was all alone in her desperation. Maybe that’s why when Sawyer scooped her up the next day—only a few feet from where we had left her—and asked if she could live in the house, I said, without hesitation, “yes.”

On the way inside, I picked up some wide costa leaves and a few flower stems before rescuing a long, flat Tupperware container from the trash. It had a crack on the side, but would house a butterfly habitat nicely. I laid everything flat on the bottom, filled an orange teaspoon with water, and the Sawyer carefully set our little monarch inside. She crawled on top of a pale purple flower and flattened her full wing out wide.

Mary Oliver would have something really beautiful to say about all this. I once read a poem she wrote about loons who kept dying on the seashore and another about a fox she found dead in an old tractor wheel, and I walked away from both of those poems feeling—and this might sound strange—hopeful.

The loons cried out a long, beautiful, sacred song on their last day. “I tell you this,” she wrote about them, “to break your heart, by which I mean that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.” As for the fox, she noted that it must have looked out into the world until the last possible moment. Then, she crawled inside the same tractor wheel. She took the same posture. She took the same view. “Oh, beautiful world!” She wrote.

Mary Oliver never hesitated to look brokenness square in the eyes.

One day last April, Sawyer’s oldest sister wouldn’t get out of bed. At 8 a.m. (which for these kids is astonishingly late), I went to check on her. She was awake in her top bunk, snuggled into her yellow and gray knit blanket. She joined me downstairs just long enough to quietly eat a piece of toast, and then she promptly put herself back to bed until 10:15.

I checked on her frequently and always found her either sleeping, crying, or complaining of a bellyache. At one point, she said, “I don’t know what’s wrong.” While big tears slipped down her cheeks.

“I know,” I said as I pulled a few blonde curls away from her face. “I know. You’re feeling a lot of feelings. It’s okay.”

As I walked out of her room each time, I didn’t know what to do. The circumstances of the world all felt too big and too broken—a theme not limited to that single spring day.

I was tempted to ignore it. I could have left it alone once she came downstairs and distracted her with ice cream or an episode of her favorite show, which, no doubt, would have taken her mind off things. Instead, I leaned into into the broken things. Together, we gave the big feelings names like “sad” and “worried,” and I tried to help her understand that it wasn’t supposed to be this way—that it wouldn’t always be this way.

I wander how Mary Oliver would have said it. She mostly wrote about nature and not first graders curled up with baby blankets, but I suppose the brokenness of nature isn’t really all that different from any of the brokenness I come face to face with on a daily basis. Pain is real. Death is inevitable. Things will continue bring us grief. “We lift them to our shoulders,” Mary Oliver wrote about the things that grieve us.” We continue walking into the future.”

In the face of brokenness, will I ignore it? Or will I pay attention?

I could tell when our monarch was dying. After three weeks of living on the kitchen windowsill, her color faded, and her movement slowed down. One day, I came into the kitchen and found her completely still. I picked her up, carried her outside, and buried her beneath a tree.

I stood there for a few minutes—thinking and pressing the soil down with the sole of my tennis shoe. I didn’t save that little butterfly. I can’t save anyone from any of the hard and painful things they will face. All I can do is steward well the brokenness that crosses my path. I can change my vantage point. I can break my heart open and never close it again to the rest of the world.

Why Choose Film?

Choosing Film

Any photographer will tell you, research and tutorials are good and useful, but the best way to learn how to take pictures is to take pictures. Lots and lots and lots of pictures.

Digital photography, of course, is built for this. Even if you’re not a photographer, you know what I mean because you likely have thousands of photos on your camera roll. Any novice armed with an iPhone knows they can take 40 pictures in under a minute. Pick the best one, delete the other 39. (Or, if you’re like me, leave the 39 on your camera roll and then become irritated with yourself at the end of the year when you’re attempting to back up 17,639 photos, the majority of which are complete garbage).

Shooting film is different. Film is slow, purposeful. Strategic. Intentional. I can’t take 40 pictures in under a minute—first, because I only have 36 shots, and second, because I can practically hear the cha-Ching sound as I push the shutter button.

When every shot costs you something, you approach it differently.

You…wait.

You wait for the light to be perfect. You wait for the moment. The smile. The breeze. You look around until you notice something worth capturing.

The noticing is my favorite part, but sometimes it’s hard for me. I get stuck in my head. I’m good at overthinking.

Shooting film reminds me of why I picked up a camera in the first place: paying attention to the tiny beautiful things is one of my coping mechanisms.

It’s teaching me to be more grateful. It’s teaching me to embrace mistakes, to get comfortable with imperfection. Unlike shooting digitally, I cannot self-correct in the moment. I can’t shoot three pictures, look at the preview on a screen, and then correct my composition, my exposure, my anything.

I simply hit the shutter button and hope for the best.

Film isn’t perfect, and when I developed my first roll, I actually came to appreciate that. I like the grain, the grittiness, the soft focus. I also noticed something else, when shooting film, I’m less likely to attempt to “perfect” the moment the way I do with digital.

For example, if I am shooting a family on a couch, and after 10 frames I realize there’s a cup on the side table, I will remove the cup and shoot 10 more frames.

When shooting film—I am focused on the light, the subject, and hardly anything else. If there’s something imperfect I don’t notice right away, oh well. I’m certainly not going to waste more frames (cha-Ching! Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!) trying to get it right.

A perfect example? This picture:

Out of my first two rolls of film, 72 shots total, this was my favorite. Can I confess something to you? Had I been shooting this scene digitally, I think I would have paused to have him look at me. But in that moment, crouched down on the ground, watching my cousin play with his dump truck, I was focused on two things: him, and the light.

I watched him for several minutes, talking to himself, counting how many sticks could fit into the back before he dumped it—one, two, tree, eleven!

Click. I didn’t have time to call him. I didn’t even think about calling him.

And now, as I stare at this picture, my favorite in the entire batch, I am so glad I didn’t. Because he plays like this all the time. This is such an accurate portrayal of him, age three, sitting underneath the tallest tree in the yard, just squatting with his dump truck, in his own little world.

I want to learn to shoot film so I can take more pictures like this—pictures of raw, ordinary life. I want to learn to appreciate the moment while I’m in it. I want to learn to stop being so distracted, running around like my to-do list is the most important part of my day. I want to learn to pause, to wait, to savor the light, to focus in on one, beautiful moment. I want to get comfortable with my own mistakes. I want to learn something new. I want to loosen my grip on a constant, exhausting pursuit of control and perfection.

I want my creative work to be more interesting this year.

Little dreams are stirring in my heart, and I want to practice radical acceptance. I want to stop hesitating. I want to stop worrying so much about what other people think. I want to embrace courage and boldness and be willing to fall on my face.

This year, I want to make art that makes me feel alive.