Theora

I am going through a chapter of being afraid of so much. My body and heart are weary. The good news is that I know I will get through it. I have been here before and I have found my way through. In the finding, I also seem to grow myself into a new version of me that I love and admire even more. —----- A few nights ago, in the throes of grief and tears, my partner asked me what were three things I liked about myself. I had the hardest time connecting to liking myself. I finally said my collarbone, my eyes, and my hair. He gently laughed and said, “Now what are three non-physical things you like about yourself.” When I pouted, he was unrelenting and said with a smile, “You did this to yourself.” I slowly listed off: “My creativity… My awareness of others… My curiosity…”. Then he wrapped me up in his arms and ended up breathing on my face, which I kinda hate but hated just a little bit less in that moment, and we tucked in for sleep. Get yourself someone who is gentle on you when you are hard on you. There is so much healing in it. —---- Want to read the whole essay? You can find it for free on Substack. Link in my bio.

I absolutely love gloomy weather. How much easier it is to justify knitting by the window while listening to another fantastically narrated science fiction series. How much more often it occurs to me to brew a cup of tea and pull out my journal to find myself again within its pages. How much easier it is to give myself permission to cuddle up with my partner because I’m not afraid I’m missing out on Summer’s sensational antics. —-- I guess I’m somewhat of a pagan, although that word seems oddly sterile to me. Identities I’ve felt kinship with have fallen more along the lines of green witch, forest witch, hearth witch, or lately sea witch. Witch simply being someone who communes with and feels magic in the natural elements. I see godliness in the Earth. I revere the paradox, symbiosis, simplicity, and complexity with which Life/Nature organizes itself. I experience our mortality as precious. I think joy and pleasure are sacred. I find myself worshiping the relentlessness of existence and the minutiae of slow living. —---- Want to read the whole essay? You can find it for free on Substack. Link in my bio.

In Arlo’s last chapter, we took it one day at a time. I strove to carve out more moments to give him gentle scratches and did my best to be patient with his body and mind. I did my best to leave my phone at home when we went on walks so that I could be disconnected from productivity and to-do lists and really let him smell as much and as slowly as he wanted. That chapter wasn’t fun, but it was tender and humanizing. It shed light on so many ways we rush through what really matters and are tossed around by systems of motion and power that pull us away from our relationships and living our life in the right-now moment. —---- Want to read the whole essay? You can find it for free on Substack. Link in my bio.

I’ve fought hard to like being a woman in a world where Woman is steadily reviled. I love being a woman with a ferocity that makes me feel connected to women the world over and as many generations back as my imagination can touch. That said, I’ve been intimately exploring existence beyond the gender binary… beyond the confines of heteronormative scripts that say what a woman is and what a woman is not. Molds that tell me I can’t touch or inhabit parts of myself if they fall outside the script. Messaging so violent that for most of us, we never even look in the direction that stretches outside the confines of the binary. Outside the walls of these rigid, uninteresting definitions I have found many subtle insights - ranging from the absolutely inconsequential and quirky to the profoundly earth-shattering - both about myself and the world. Maybe, just maybe, the way we live our lives in the small, less noticeable moments, is the rumble that builds into the collective tidal wave of change. I believe in the power of individual effort because of how powerfully I have been influenced by individuals. Of course we need systemic change and action on a massive, collective scale. But I don’t know how to access that in my day-to-day life in a meaningful way. The magic I actually have at hand is how I show up today for the world I want tomorrow, so that’s what I feel called to do. —---- Want to read the whole essay? You can find it for free on Substack. Link in my bio.

Making Friends (as an Adult) - The Workshop! Tomorrow, I am hosting a one-time workshop on making friends and building community as an adult. Everyone craves friendship and a sense of belonging. Even the most extroverted and seemingly confident of us! This is for anyone who wants to deepen or cultivate new, wonderful, friendships! What we’ll cover: the importance of belonging and how to cultivate it how to embody your whole-dang self so that enriching friendships are attracted to you discernment and determining which people are the right fit for you how to build trust with others (and yourself) how to make sense of friendship loss or difficulties and real-world strategies that foster new connections in meaningful ways The link to sign up is in my bio. We still have a few spots left!

Making Friends (as an Adult) - The Workshop! On January 18th, I am hosting a one-time workshop on making friends and building community as an adult. Everyone craves friendship and a sense of belonging. Even the most extroverted and seemingly confident of us! This is for anyone who wants to deepen or cultivate new, wonderful, friendships! What we’ll cover: the importance of belonging and how to cultivate it how to embody your whole-dang self so that enriching friendships are attracted to you discernment and determining which people are the right fit for you how to build trust with others (and yourself) how to make sense of friendship loss or difficulties and real-world strategies that foster new connections in meaningful ways The link to sign up is in my bio. We still have a few spots left!

I hope that you’ll come face-to-face with the realization that you want to spend your time exclusively with people who nourish you, encourage you, and leave you wanting more of their vibrancy in your life after you’ve hugged and bid each other goodnight. I hope that you’ll recognize that diluting yourself will not help your people find you in a room full of other people trying to dilute themselves. Making yourself less weird will not help people find you who love your flavor of weird. Trying to nip and tuck and trim yourself down into what you imagine other people like, will draw you into relationships where people benefit from a nipped, tucked, and trimmed-down shadow of who you really are. And this is the crux of my secret. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. And THAT makes me some people’s favorite kind of tea. I would love to help you harness the magic of all of your You-ness so that you can find your people, too. I’m hosting a workshop on making friends and building community as an adult. What we’ll cover: - the importance of belonging and how to cultivate it - discernment and determining which people are the right fit for you - how to build trust with others (and yourself) - how to make sense of friendship loss or difficulties - and real-world strategies that foster new connections in meaningful ways The link to join is in my bio. I hope to see you there!

The book Braving the Wilderness by @brenebrown is an incredible foray into the importance of belonging and what people need in their connections in order to cultivate trust so that they can experience belonging. There is a clear template of what relationships need to have in order to invite the people involved into real, honest intimacy. Her research will feature in the workshop I am teaching later this month! It’s going to be a workshop on making friends and building community as an adult. What we’ll cover: - the importance of belonging and how to cultivate it - discernment and determining which people are the right fit for you - how to build trust with others (and yourself) - how to make sense of friendship loss or difficulties - and real-world strategies that foster new connections in meaningful ways The link to join is in my bio. I hope to see you there!

Rejection and loss have been painful. But I’m more resilient to rejection than ever before because of the rewards those losses afford me. The community and friends I have around me now are my people. They like me not in spite of my traditionally unlikeable qualities but because of them. For my humans… My loudness is what makes me the life of the party. My sensitivity is what makes me the person they can call with dark hurts knowing they will be held with fierce love, compassion, and understanding. My outspokenness makes me someone they can trust to speak her mind so they don’t find themselves in the scary position of trying to guess where we stand. My intensity is what makes me vivacious, challenging, and captivating to be around and learn alongside. I would love to help you harness the magic of all of your You-ness so that you can find your people, too. I’m hosting a workshop on making friends and building community as an adult. What we’ll cover: - the importance of belonging and how to cultivate it - discernment and determining which people are the right fit for you - how to build trust with others (and yourself) - how to make sense of friendship loss or difficulties - and real-world strategies that foster new connections in meaningful ways The link to join is in my bio. I hope to see you there!

It takes bravery to build a life around joy, inspiration, justice, love, art, and the unknown in a world where most people build their lives around comfort and familiarity. When I notice I’m being apologetic or anxious, I remember the promise I made to myself. The promise to choose love over fear. It helps me remember that I get to take up space, that I am not too much, and that I add unique value to the world. I remember it in the moments of my relationship when I am afraid of getting hurt again. It helps me come back to resilient open-heartedness and my desire to be a courageous devotee of healthy love. PS - Take a phone-free walk today, yeah? Maybe even a couple. It feels real good. —---- Want to read the whole essay? You can find it for free on Substack. Link in my bio.

I have been searching for how to create, work, and show up authentically for many months (now almost years) and found myself eddying out into this weird no man’s land of indecision, self-doubt, and lack of inspiration. Burnout is traumatic, and my body didn’t want to move towards what it associated with trauma, which was Work… Creating… Showing Up… Now I know it’s because I still had a major layer to shed… The layer that wanted every creation to be part of a conversion funnel that made long-term sense and fed into a design that *had to be making money*. The layer that kept turning my thoughts to unhealthy, uninteresting, unethical marketing philosophies and tactics. The layer that constantly pushed me to create-to-get rather than create-to-give. Thank you for coming along for the ride and believing in the importance of weirdness, art, and a little bit more love in the world. —---- Want to read the whole essay? You can find it for free on Substack. Link in my bio.