How dear it is to have your own personal healer and sage. If you live in Portland and are hungry for a deep soulful alternative to traditional therapy, send me an email and I’ll fix you up with my sweet Maya.
How essential it is to have Love as one of the values you hold close. Thank you Kelly Rae for gently shepherding my heart home on this one.
How good it is to find your strength, the place where holding space feels like magic. (Photo of me and Kelly Rae by soulseer Karen Walrond)
How healing it is to watch a kindred spirit take her place as a keeper of the heart’s truest tales. Thank you Jen for being my tribe.
How kind the companionship is of this dear earth and the knowledge of all the ways the Universe upholds, enfolds and surrounds every step of your journey.
How happy it is to see yourself through the eyes of another, through the eyes of companionship and deep love. (Photo by my sweet Andrea)
I don’t have many words these days, only the sound of the world shifting under my feet. Maybe this wordle says it all. Share the links to yours in the comments below–I’d love to see them.
this comes to me from kindness girl who is teaching me it is okay to be
I’m in deep grief today, the kind that comes not of depression or despair, but of letting go of pretending that certain things do not give me deep heartache or pain. It is a magical place, let me tell you, where time collapses and you can feel the heart of God, if you only have the courage to reach out your hand.
I have been praying these days which is saying something, since most of the time I do so suspecting my words never make it past my tear stained couch. Still. There is something to being on one’s knees, face down in your arms, asking for radical change, leaning on grace.
Sometimes my answers come in the form of angels sent to me unaware, and for this I often feel like God’s favorite. I am so often upheld by giants of Love, the kind of people who you pass on the street and feel sorry for because they are poor or uneducated or unable to speak much English. One of my superpowers is to understand and know deeply that true treasures wait here, that a certain kind of strength and confidence resides in the exact places and in the very people you’d least expect.
This morning I am thankful for L. She showed up yesterday afternoon, arriving as she always does, right when I need her most. She lent me her calm and her strength and stayed until dawn because that’s how long I needed her near to know I will be okay.
I am feeling stronger now and a little bit of hope, that this is not the end of my story, that change will bring me to peaceful shores. I hope this Love Thursday, you are feeling the same.
I believe things are unfolding exactly as they should.
I believe that your life–the one you were always meant for since the beginning of time–rises up to meet you when you least expect it
I believe that you are not alone in your grief and that I’m not lost in mine either
I believe in the endurance of love and the kindness of friendship
I believe in love that will not let you go
I believe in taking chances so something beautiful can be born
I believe in the power of tears to heal your heart
I believe you can be made brand new
I believe the best is yet to come
I believe in surprises, miracles and the power of prayer
I believe that nothing will be wasted
I believe in asking for help and then being quiet so the answers can come from inside
I believe in change, revolution and the kind of chaos that brings peace
I believe it’s okay not to know what happens next
I believe in dreams
I believe in God, Jesus, the virgin Mary and all that other crazy stuff it’s too silly to say you believe in out loud
I believe in happiness, hard work and letting the power of the Universe flow right through you
I believe in Love
Wading through deep, deep waters over here. Holding on to simple things like the kindness of friends and the deep dawning recognition that I know so little about how my life is unfolding. What’s holding you these days?
It feels fitting right now to let some things that have been sitting in my studio go out into the world, like this painting above. If you would be interested in purchasing this (original watercolor on bristol board 14″x17″, unmatted, unframed), email me with an offer + a poem or a bit of advice or a song or any other little thing you’d like to throw into the exchange. The only requirement is that you can pay on Paypal, that you put kindness in the subject line and that it would do your soul good to have it. I’ll randomly pick a home for this lovely in the next few days and ship on Monday.
Here’s trusting kindness is following you no matter how hard you’re tempted to doubt it.
I first met Jen Lee last fall in a tiny restaurant on the Lower East Side. She was the first person to show up for a little blog meetup with readers from New York City, and she arrived just in time to relieve my anxiety that I would be the only person to show. We had just enough time together before the others arrived to realize our paths had been crossing for some time–in shared friendships, similar upbringings, a familiar love for the writing life and so much more.
Since that meeting, Jen has been my mothership whenever I need to be home away from home in her Brooklyn apartment. When I need to feel calm, all that’s ever required is the sweet memory of listening to Jen in her kitchen, helping Amelia “cook” while baby Lucy makes Charlie Brown school teacher noises in the background. I have such a deep respect and awe for all the ways Jen’s wisdom and beauty pours into the world.
Of Jen’s many superpowers one of my favorites is her gift for a phrase, a line or a story that heals you right where it hurts. I have been on the receiving end of this wisdom and this love more times than I can count now, so I am all the more delighted that Jen’s taking the plunge and publishing Don’t Write: A Reluctant Journal in real live book form so that her goodness can reach beyond the lucky circle of friends who find peace and happiness dozing on her little red sofa in Brooklyn.
Anyone who has ever tried to commit words on paper knows how quickly the voices rise, bargaining, begging you to please for the love of God, your father, your sister, your mother, do NOT write that–anything but that. It’s crazy making to hold in your stories, even when doing so can be in many ways the most tender and brave way to get back on the road to love and home and the truth of where everything good began. Jen’s journal is the perfect companion for this kind of journey and I hope this limited edition short run is completely sold out by the good readers of this blog who have a heart for courage and who understand before the pen ever hits the page, that getting it all out–even for your own eyes only–is more often than not, the most radical and healing act of all.
Please spread the word and pre-order tonight if you can. If nothing else, you’ll be so glad to have this title on your bookshelf, giving you all the gentle support you need to write exactly what’s on your mind whenever your heart is ready.
The lesson
which life repeats and constantly enforces is
“Look under foot.”
You are always
nearer to the divine and the
true sources of your power
than you think.
The lure of the distant and the difficult
is deceptive. The great opportunity is
where you are.
Do not despise your own place and hour.
Every place is under the stars,
every place is the center of the world.
This phrase hangs over my head these days–sometimes like a blessing, others like a benediction. My whole life I have been looking for ways to avoid my life and I have found the sweetest ways on earth to do it. You love me for this, along with so many people in my everyday life. I guess I learned early on that if you are going to numb the pain or silence the voice of your truest self, you should do it in a way that at a minimum makes you admired or popular.
These days–me and my baby girl self–we are learning what it means to just be, to cry if we want to, to tell the truth first of all to ourselves, even if it is dark and difficult and more messy than we ever thought we’d have courage for. This is no cake walk, let me tell you, and I have waves of sheer panic if I let myself register the seismic shifts happening in my heart, but I am discovering little by little this is the only way into Trust, the only way into the truth of the life trying to get born in me.
I wonder what it looks like, I ask myself, when I wake up on that morning and look myself in the face and know deep down that I’m through with betraying that baby or the brave wild girl growing up on the inside. I wonder what it feels like, I ask as I write, to quit running, to stop hiding, to let all the goodness seep out through the cracks of my amazing broken heart.
I’ve been thinking about this video so much lately as I continue to process my experience in Rwanda and do my best to map out the new landscape of my heart. It’s so interesting to me that at the beginning she describes her experience of her right brain as being like a baby since that was exactly my experience of being in Africa.
I think what you experienced in Africa is reflecting something very real and very important, but it happened at the level of instinct, intuition, sensation, producing a kind of knowing that is processed on the right side of the brain. It’s valid and essential truth, but it’s non-linear, non-verbal, spirit/soul/body. Your left brain tries to bite off a chunk and try to figure out the implications, but it just doesn’t speak that language well, so it creates distress trying too hard to understand.
I wonder if this isn’t true for so many of us as we try to make sense out of our dreams and the persistent tug from the Universe begging us to wake up to another way of knowing, another way of being in the world. We try to make sense of it the way we know best–through analysis or therapy or discussion or logic–but at the end of the day there is no sense to be made–just the very brave acknowledgment that we have something new to make peace with in our hearts, something more true than we could ever explain.
I don’t know if this makes any sense at all (how could it, right? in light of the topic? ), but maybe you know what I’m talking about. And maybe like me, you have everything you need to trust that knowing and to follow it with kindness and courage all the way home.
), but maybe you know what I’m talking about. And maybe like me, you have everything you need to trust that knowing and to follow it with kindness and courage all the way home.
My name is Jen Lemen. I'm messy, hopeful,
enthusiastic and helplessly in love with the idea
that stories can change you and me forever.