Lore Ferguson Wilbert

It feels like a dream to get to walk up here every day and work. The light is magical. ✨☀️✨

What’s under the story of your life? What’s under the grief? The anger? The sadness? The fear? What’s the thing beneath the thing? The dead or dying thing? The lost or broken thing? The sad or confusing thing? I’m not here to tell you it’s all happening for a reason or things will get better or God isn’t wasting this. I’m here to say there’s something earthy, human, mysterious, maybe even made of clay or stardust or webs of mycelia or ashes or weeds. I’m here to say if we’re trying to just explain away everything we might be missing something miraculous right HERE. Right here, right now, in this place, even void of the peace we want, under it all, something beautiful is happening. PS And in just a few hours, this book HERE will be in your hands 🤲🏼 PPS I want to see where YOU ARE when you hold this book in your actual hands. Tag me in your photos! @lorewilbert #TheUnderstory

It was a kind of ick day I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but I wish everyone could know this guy. My guy, seen here after a shepherds pie, an IPA, and an hour of listening to me crack wide open. Happy birthday, my guy. You’re the very best.

I hope you feel like you belong where you are ✨

I should have loved this novel. I did not. One star, for the concept, which was brilliant. Less four stars for its execution, which was, IMO, terrible. Swipe for the quick review. 🌈🌈 Comment MORE if you want to read my fuller thoughts on this book and who gets to decide what “good” is in art. #yesteryear

Your lines (and grays!) are endangered creatures in this year or 2026. Protect them! Put them on a postage stamp. Create a non-profit for them. Raise monies. Tell your neighbor. But most of all, tell yourself. (That’s what I’m doing.) ✌🏼✌🏼✌🏼✌🏼

Listen to me, I recognize that I have very little credibility in the world of writing. I have never written a bestseller, I bleed Instagram followers like a bad period, I get all kinds of uncomfortable when someone comes up to me in public and asks for an autograph or photo, and despite having been at this for a quarter of a century, I still haven’t found my niche (though I confess to not looking very hard for it). So you don’t actually have to listen to me, but you’re here anyway, so why not? You’ve got to resist. You’ve got to. Please resist. ….. Don’t Outsource Your Best Quality—up on lorewilbert dot com

Eight weeks ago I was feeling like Joy was never going to surface again for me. I wasn’t even depressed, I mean, apart from normal February blues. I just felt like, will I ever feel hope the way I used to feel it with regularity? 🟣 I bought a purple shirt that says JOY on it in big letters. 🐕 I amped my pups up for aunt Bean visits. 🐟 I watched my guy get excited about his hobby of fly fishing for trout. 🪐 I went to the theater twice with people I love and once by my very own self to watch and rewatch Project Hail Mary. 🌈 I hung crystals and beads and gifted prisms from friends in my windows. 🌸 I framed art that makes me really happy. 🌱 I watched my pups love the green plastic grass we finally caved and laid down for them. ✂️ I made art and more art and more art. ❤️💜💙 And last week we finished our last episode of The Side Aisle and when we asked one another what feels different, I knew immediately: I’m on the prowl for hope. I’m sniffing it out like a dog, like one of my dogs. I’m hunting it out, tracking it down, chasing hard after it, and I’m doing it indiscriminately. I’m not picking or choosing, I’m finding and sharing and making and mining. And I’m feeling it.

When I shared about how my wrestles with faith and doubt began as a young child (peep my kindergarten pic in this collage) with an older person of faith recently, he called it “a cast of mind.” I’ve thought about that a lot lately, how our minds are formed and cast around so many important things as we grow. And how changing our minds, despite the iron grip of whatever mold we are in, is some of the most beautiful and difficult work of our lives. But the mind is made to be changed. Again and again and again and again. Renewed, the Bible calls it. Transformed. Changing—cellular, molecular, skin shedding, taste buds, allergies, our brains expanding and healing and making new connections—is literally what keeps us alive in the world. When our brains are dead, it’s over. So get introspective about the ways you have changed and the ways you want to change and the ways the people around you change and how they change you too. It’s some of the best work you’ll ever do 🧡

When your guy finds a stack of NatGeos from the 60s under the stairs in your basement, you turn them into collage immediately.

I have never, not in over twenty years of writing online, gone viral. Going viral is extremely easy if you’re a half-decent writer, but I’ve never tried to go viral on purpose. I’m not interested in what makes someone go viral. I’m not interested in writing the kinds of things that go viral. I’m extremely not interested in being trolled by bots or humans. I don’t want to provide a place for anyone to show up and be their worst self in a comment thread. Not for me. I’ve stated that pretty publicly over the years and while all my writer friends had their viral moments, I kept my V card. (Sorry, had to.) Within a few hours that post had over 100k views on Instagram. I did not mean to do that and would undo it if I could without deleting the post. But here’s what happened instead: 🐦‍⬛ On Going Viral and Blackbirds: Empathy is only Toxic if we can’t find it in ourselves 🐦‍⬛ writing this one made me cry so I also read this one aloud to you :) Comment BLACKBIRD and I’ll send the link to you

I’m turning off comments because I’m tired of telling people to actually read the caption before attacking me. I didn’t vote for Trump. Not once. ✌🏼 **** I don’t know how much more clear I can be. I DID NOT vote for Trump. The title of this post is what I WISH the people I know who did vote for him and regret it, would say to me. I did not vote for him, not once, twice, or three times. But I’ve needed to hear this from someone and I don’t think I ever will, so I wrote it to myself, and for you, from whoever you need it to be from. We weren’t crazy in 2016, 2020, 2024, or today. We weren’t crazy all those days in between. We weren’t the undiscerning ones. We saw it all, right from the start. And it’s okay to feel sad about how crazy we’ve been made to feel for the past decade. ❤️