Sitting at my desk today in my pretty pink bedroom, listening to a few hours of original audio recordings that Brené and I recorded last year this time in preparation for this. They’re so funny and raw and wise and tender, I feel so happy and lucky that those conversations ever happened.

I have the funniest history with Brené and her work. I’m always asking her, What are you talking about? What are you even saying? To which replies, Brené, You really haven’t read my books, have you? And then I say, No, no I have! and we both laugh.

But I have to say that more and more I think I’m getting what Brené is about. I’m coming to the edges of my vulnerability…those spaces where I wonder if I made a mistake (guilt) or if I AM a mistake (shame). I think of my new frontiers of exploration…love and relationships and see all the places I obsess, wondering if I’m too much when the real question is Is this a safe space for me to reveal what’s in my heart? or this very important question… Do I have the courage to reveal what’s going on with me, even if it means I might face bewilderment, indifference or rejection? even if it means I’ll be welcoming in unnerving sweetness, kindness or joy?

In less then a week, we’ll be on Day One of Ordinary Courage again, a five week class where Brené shares her field-tested wisdom about shame resilience, and I ask a lot of questions and make a lot of safe space for you to wonder out loud, too. It’s beautiful work, really, and I’m so proud to be a part of it. If you wanted to join me there, I promise you won’t be making a mistake and you’ll be glad to realize that you’re not the only one who needs to grow ordinary courage. God knows we all do.

Register here.

See Brené here…

After the heroics, the drama, the dreaming…there’s a simple quiet and the task of stringing days together one after another. Days of kindness, days of lovely lunches, days of swept floors, days of simple heartfelt requests and so much goodness. This is my work these days. Not the abnormal, but the simple courage…

The Abnormal is not Courage
by Jack Gilbert

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it’s not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn’t that. Not at its best.
It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore’s heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month’s rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

Where’s your edge today? To entertain the abnormal or to make room for long accomplishment?

1. i’m really happy. deep down happy.
2. i’ve made some sort of peace with being sad. it’s normal. and it’s not the end of the world.
3 i’m not looking for true love anymore. i want to be true love and i want to love others for who they are. period.
4. i’m starting to let go of regrets…
5. like blowing up my family, getting those girls out, letting friendships go
6. i think hopelessness is as important as hopefulness
7. i’ve never been straighter in my entire life but i’m always happiest when i have a work/play/life partner like rachael maddox
8. i kiss on the first date. and then tell.
9. i think letting everything break has made me more beautiful and more strong.
10. i’m tortured by self-doubt, but i’m starting to see the way out of that forest
11. i once asked a married man to run around the world with me and then spent six months tortured hoping he’d change his mind and say yes
12. i didn’t feel guilty about asking for one millisecond.
13. but i did feel 1000% times better when i let that relationship go.
14. i love foul language, misogynistic hip hop and trash talking with the boys.
15. nothing makes me laugh more than inappropriate humor.
16. i don’t know what appropriate is so much of the time.
17. this bothers me. but then i’m inappropriate anyway.
18. i’m in a deep dark exploration into the ways and wisdom of men
19. this must be what it was supposed to be like in college, only with better liquor and nicer beds and yummier kisses
20. i’m more sensual and uninhibited and free than i ever imagined
21. i learn best through experience
22. i’m not afraid of heartbreak, but i’m deathly scared of losing my equilibrium
23. i’ve never felt more alive
24. i don’t want to be famous or popular or known for anything other than that i was deep and wise and had a soul that was wildly beautiful, full of mercy and light.
25. i believe that real religion is the willingness to lie down in green grass naked and call everything in the world blessed.
26. and i mean everything. the haters, the murderers, the evil-doers, the righteous, the forgotten, the lost, the fighting, the weary, the wandering and the found.
27. i’m not as interested in love as i am in peace, but it’s a close contest. i think love is the intersection of acceptance, joy and irrational belief in the totality of the other.
28. i think peace is knowing that all is well, deep down on the inside, no matter what is going on around you.
29. i would bungee jump off the side of a bridge if you asked me to.
30. but then i would forget when we agreed to go and then feel awful about it.
31. i’m not very good at taking care of basic things.
32. i think apples is a reasonable dinner.
33. food is the gateway to both my soul and my vagina. if you feed me, i will cum.
34. i’m endlessly impressed with a man who sees things clearly, keeps his perspective to himself and then adjusts accordingly to meet the need and make a difference. it’s a cross between insight and intuition with a dash of courage.
35. i’m not that impressed with monogamy, but i’m not ruling it out either.
36. i think much of our suffering comes from trying to either stay in the lines ourselves or insisting others do the same.
37. i manifest my extreme sense of responsibility by never asking for help, taking on too much and then heaping tons of judgment on my head when i can’t pull it off and need to go back and ask for help. which i should have done in the first place.
38. that little africa adventure i had? it totally and completely kicked my ass. i’m still a little PTSD, but getting better everyday.
39. getting those girls out should have come with the warning…don’t try this at home.
40. i really love to drink whiskey
41. but i really like to stay in control
42. knowing where that fine line is is one of my superpowers
43. i’m unimpressed by good behavior, but tender hearts that desperately want to be of service to the world in some way? that gets me every time.
44. if you try to be hopeful, you will discover how to be a disaster. hoping means unleashing your desire, and desire unleashed wreaks havoc.
45. at the bottom of that havoc is a weird kind of all knowing peace. and joy.
46. and a new kind of hope that’s better than the one you started out with.
47. i really want a simple life
48. i recently hitchhiked to avoid cab fare in new york city. it felt mildly dangerous and fun.
49. i’m rarely afraid in these situations and i wonder if this is a problem.
50. i have a finely tuned sense of what is truly dangerous and what is not.
51. it doesn’t have to be dangerous to be scary. in fact, the real danger for me lies in the overwhelmed feeling i get that everything will be okay, no matter what and not wanting the no matter what part to not be too unpleasant.
52. i was so depressed this year, questioning and reviewing my entire life, i didn’t talk to anyone except my immediate family and one or two friends for about four months. it was a dark night of the soul but without the necessary medication or emotional support.
53. i let everything go during that time and watched it all break around me.
54. this was a kind of clearing away of the last of my old life
55. i believe in destruction
56. i don’t think we should always try to save things or make them work
57. i think that everything changes and everyone leaves and that we have no guarantees
58. and that’s okay.
59. i get a lot of energy from being very quiet and peaceful.
60. i’m realizing how naturally passive and even submissive i can be sometimes.
61. i like this.
62. i really am tired of being a know-it-all. of having all the tips. of having all the ideas. of knowing how to fix shit and make shit happen.
63. i’m easing into a more organic way of being.
64. i hate it when i let people down
65. i’m learning that this sometimes happens when i’m an asshole, but more often then not, it also happens when who i truly am is in direct contrast with who this person imagined i am. sometimes that discrepancy has nothing to do with me and is not my fault.
66. i really like assholes.
67. of all the things needing nurturing, my body has been the most neglected. which is why touch is better for me right now than anything else.
68. i’m learning how to say that won’t work for me, which feels radical and strange, since i’ve always been the girl who only knew where the gas pedal was, with or without power steering.
69. i’ve had delicious affairs involving motorcycles.
70. i used to think audacity and hubris were virtues, but now i prize tenderness and humility more.
71. i’m learning how to say i’m sorry and mean it. not just say the words because i know that’s the right thing to do.
72. i’m worried i’m actually a crappy mother. i see all the ways i could improve or even just bring myself up to average but then i never change. i hate myself for banking on forgiveness more than transformation and growth.
73. i don’t care about money. i’d rather we all just traded pens or sang each other songs as some form of currency
74. i prefer fucking to making love.
75. i’m like a light skinned woman of color in the nineteenth century trying to pass into white society. by virtue of not being covered in tattoos and wearing dreads, i might be accused of false advertising.
76. i take all those pictures of myself because there’s no one here to see this physical and emotional transformation i’m going through that manifests itself by pouring out of my skin. i want there to be a record of how i became so alive again and so free.
77. i only take my face because i think the rest of me looks like shit 90% of the time. i’m worried i’ll always have a big stomach.
78. i want a man who will come home late at night and drink whiskey with me on the front porch while we tell stories and joke and then who will climb up the stairs, and let me undress him so he can fuck me silly.
79. and until that man shows up and wants to stay awhile, i’ll be cavorting with poets and writers and painters and artists and hopefully a motorcycle mechanic who wants to take me on rides every saturday until i’m sixty.
80. i need to write my memoir and i’m getting scared i won’t do it
81. i want to wander around the world with madeleine so she can see how smart i am and how free she can be
82. i want to wander through forests with carter so he can feel how deep i am and how fearless he can be
83. i want to sit under a tree with the ones i loved and lost as dear friends and brothers and talk about all our mistakes and all the ways we wished it could be
84. i want to spend my old age couch surfing on the sofas of all the twenty-somethings who lounged on mine. i want to eat their leftover takeout and tell their daughters scandalous stories and give them marginal marriage advice and be a cackling old source of truth and healing.
85. i’m not afraid to be old alone.
86. i know there’s so much more unraveling and shedding and grieving to do before i die.
87. but i also know there’s so much more delicious hope, wild laughter and deep down joy.
88. i’m not afraid to be alive.
89. but it’s easier when i take lots of naps and cry as often as necessary.
90. i’m worried about being too late and saying no when i should have said yes.
91. i’m so horribly slow at learning.
92. i feel most alive when kissed, and also when we’re laughing.
93. i want to lead a revolution for three year-olds. i just love how they cry and lose their shit and how everything is about identity and power. i’m right there with ya, kid.
94. i’m making peace with the fact that some people might view me as spoiled, privileged, whiny, self-absorbed, narcissistic, megolomaniacal and/or insane.
95. it’s all true! and choosing to see it helps me melt my hard heart into humble growth, confession and gratitude.
96. owning your shadow is perhaps the most powerful thing you can do
97. aside from letting someone see you and love you fully with your eyes wide open because you are beautiful to them and they don’t fucking care if you know it or not as long as you let them do whatever the hell they want to do with you, from head to toe
98. i’m getting everything i deserve…all the lessons, all the suffering, all the heartbreak. but also all the joy, all the passion, all the love, all the companionship
99. i wouldn’t trade what i know now for what i had then
100. and i can only say that because i’m awake now in a way that i never was before and i had to go on a journey of hopelessness, despair, courage, truth, power and love to uncover what it means for me to be human, what it means for me to really love, not just a family in africa, but myself, my children and the whole wide world.

Whatever you do, don’t play Cold Play. Try this instead. Or this. Either one will work just fine.
Do, however, lean in. Let your eyes shine.
Say yes.
Kiss, when the moment calls. There’s no point in being any other way.

Everything you ever wanted is coming. And it will be fantastic. But only after it’s horrible. And only after you already understand that fantastic is just a moment like any other moment. And that horrible is just a state of mind. And that you’ll see plenty of both before it’s all over.

In the meantime, there’s this:
You are lovely.
More lovely than you can imagine.

And you are meant to be loved, but don’t start thinking that the love of anyone else will make you happy. Happiness is made up. It’s all in your head, and don’t you forget it.

So put that in your head.
Plant it like a seed. Pour it into your brain with super glue. Whatever it takes to make you full of hope. Whatever it takes to remind you, you aren’t the only one.

This is what I can tell you:
Hopelessness is not a problem. You will survive it. It will burn like hell on the way down but at the bottom you will find your truth. Your horrible fantastic truth. That true love is not out there or over here or with this person or not with that person.

It is a state of being that you yourself can embody.
It is a way of moving in the world that expands beyond borders
and then closes in when you’re about to compromise your basic constitution.

It is the meaning of sorrow and the entrance to bliss.
You will be disappointed that it was this easy after everything was so hard.
You will forget in five seconds and then remember in five hours, after you swore you could never do such a thing. You’ll forget and remember and remember and forget, but all the while you’ll still be here. You’ll still love. You won’t stop dreaming. Even after all this remembering. Even after all this forget.

There’s more I can say, but remember this.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

–Mary Oliver

I had a baby while I was gone. You should go say hi to her. Or put yourself on a list so I can send you her baby pictures while she’s growing. She’s so incredibly beautiful, you’ll want to stay and visit awhile. Here’s her first smile. Here she is sitting up like a big girl. You’ll love her. Promise.

I’m sitting in my kitchen, writing and listening to music with the hum of commune all around me. For my whole adult life, my front door has been a revolving door of happiness with all manner of people coming and going, my couch a perpetual way station, my dining room table, a final destination for stories waiting to be told.

All this faded rather quickly with the end of my marriage a year ago this time. For the years leading up to that separation, I told myself over and over again that we’d all be okay, as long as that commune stayed, that collection of friends and feast that kept my house buzzing and alive in certain ways. But then almost overnight, that thing completely disappeared. People stopped coming over and when there was a chance to be altogether, I often begged off. It was too painful to have people in the same space where we had once been a sweet urban family without so many splinters or fractures. I didn’t want to feel anything, and it was easier to just shut down and let that kind of connectedness slip away.

But not living in community has had a really big toll on me and my kids especially. We’ve never functioned as a single family unit. We have no rhythms for that really. It’s not really us, to sit just three at a table. It seems like there’s about five to eight people missing at least, and it feels strange. We’ve coped by retreating to all of our screens. And I went back to my pre-family and baby/toddler days where I stayed up all night and cat-napped during the day–night felt so much easier than being up and around in a quiet house.

Two weeks ago, our sweet friends Brian and Rachael moved in, making our third floor their landing spot after a seven month bike tour of the United States. Almost immediately, the kids and I looked at each other like we’d just won the lottery. Instant commune. Brian and Rachael are serious community people, they know how to cook together, how to move in and around a house with the kind of ease reserved for people who feel deep down that together is always better. I immediately felt exhausted, my whole body kind of letting down after steeling myself against how quiet it’s been and how sad we’ve all been to not live in the midst of a busy urban family. I realize all the ways I’ve been holding space and all the ways I let the space go, because it was just too hard to do it alone.

There’s a different feeling to this urban family, too, one that feels really old and familiar to me, like my childhood in some ways, so I’m absorbing that. How odd it is to be seen all the time and received in a particular way that reminds me of who I am and who I was before I made so many hard decisions.

My faith has been so tested these last few years…I’ve had to give up so many things I believed in so I could sit with nothing and be okay somehow with the great Void. It’s felt really dark and really hopeless at times, and I have been taken down to my core in ways that really rattled me and made me worry I was losing my mind. But today, with the sounds of family in my house and my front door starting to open again with friends, old and new, I’m remembering I have something to believe in, and that it’s okay to let down and let myself feel just how hard it’s been to wonder if there was nothing to believe in after all.

not too late to get into Wild Precious Life: Love Letters from a Hopeful Girl. Register here…six weeks of stories, wisdom and secrets, now-december 31, 2011.

I couldn’t have said this before, but I can tell you now.

Nothing lasts forever.

Before I would have said things like love lasts forever or family lasts forever or commitment lasts forever or friendship lasts forever, but the truth is everything changes, everything fades, nothing stays, not a single thing.

Before I would have cried if you had told me that, I would have pleaded, I would have said, no, don’t say that, that’s not true, I’m with you, we are together, we’ll always be together, maybe not like this but in some way, I hate it when you talk like that.

But not now.

Now I know that you are leaving and that I am leaving and that we are forever moving in directions strange and mysterious, that neither one of us can control or predict, no matter how wise or connected or knowing we are about this and everything else.

Before I had glimpses of this and so I mourned, how I mourned. Every second you were with me, I was grieving your going, imagining the last day, the last kiss, the last moment just in case I missed it when the time came, just in case I didn’t see it coming and you caught me by surprise.

Before I went over every scene, every sentence, every word. I examined each one for clues like a detective. Are you leaving now? How about now? And now? I missed every second you were here wondering when you would make your exit, but I don’t do that anymore.

No.

Now, I soak you in like sunshine, now I listen to every word like it’s a poem and I might joke about what the words mean, but the truth is those words, they wash over me like music, and I let them hold me and nourish me and delight me, I don’t worry one bit, because you’re here, right now, right this second and I know if that cannot be enough for me, there is no love in me, no hope, nothing worth saving at all, except this odd collection of doubts and fears that wreck me before I even start.

No, now I see another way, a way without definition, without explanation, a way where I stand completely still without expectation and I let things be what they are. I let I say, passing over the foolishness of the word, because I still think I’m the one in charge of keeping the sun on its axis. Because I still think this is a choice I have, instead of a truth I must live in, the rest a strange and torturing dream that always keeps me under.

Before that dream was my reality, an ever present nightmare, the illusion that I could shape and shift the planets at my will, bringing you closer here, sending you further away from my center there, but I know now that’s not true. I know you turn on your own trajectory, that sometimes we pass close and other times we pass far, but that the sun is its own entity and that we are merely pulled and pushed in circles around her, as we spin, spin, spin.

This is what I tell myself now, now that I don’t know the answers to anything. Now that I lost everything because I thought I had it. Now that I found my voice because I could never explain anything. Now that I am sitting here writing this letter that you will never read because I never sent it, because I didn’t want you to know that I ever wanted you to stay in the first place, that you might not even come after all, that you might never have even been here the way I imagined, except in the goodness of my mind–the only place I can always have you–a reminder that I am not as lost as I think I am, that I have made for myself without my even knowing–my heart, a humble home.

…more letters like the one in Wild Precious Life: Love Letters from a Hopeful Girl. Register here…six weeks of stories, wisdom and secrets, starting nov 13-december 31, 2011.

I’m happy to announce today that I’m opening registration to Wild Precious Life: Love Letters from a Hopeful Girl, a private space dedicated to personal stories, secrets, images and wisdom from the last three years of an unexpected adventure. Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling more and more compelled to tell the stories of what has happened in my life behind the scenes of this blog. I knew I needed a safe space, a private space–somewhere I could let my hair down, so to speak, and tell the truth about what it’s meant for me to become alive in my heart, my mind, my spirit and my body. I also knew I needed a space to share the deeper wisdom of this journey, somewhere I could be sure that people were really listening for the sake of their own path and not just watching from the sidelines.

Wild Precious Life is the answer to that need–a private, password protected space where I can write for a community of friends and allies who are working their own stories of transformation, discovering their own wisdom, one tiny brave step at a time.

This is for you if…
you love what you’re reading here
want to know more about what happened in my personal life over the last few years
are hungry for homegrown wisdom
are going through a time of transition
have more questions than answers
are curious about coming into your skin and honoring your body
are drawn to rituals, little ceremonies and other sacred ways of finding your path
you love a good story
don’t mind being surprised
love mystery, myth, meaning and magic
need inspiration to be brave with your own wild, precious life

You can expect…
Two entries a week at a minimum (I anticipate posting much more)
Intimate self-portraits
How-to rituals for navigating your own transitions, doubts and wonder
Sneak peaks at my memoir and other experiments in writing, poetry and prose
A warm, inviting place to listen, learn and reflect on your own longings and dreams

How it works…
Register here and you get access to Wild Precious Life from now until December 31. This is an experiment for me in creating a safe private space, and I’d love you to join me.

Why this? Why now?
Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling a strong draw to be more boundaried about my personal journey, especially in the online space. I also wanted to tell more stories from certain chapters of my life that are best shared in in a more cozy setting. I imagined a space that had a definite entry point, where I could know that everyone in that room was there on purpose and hadn’t arrived randomly for this reason or that. Wild Precious Life is my answer to that.

What happens to this blog?
jenlemen.com will remain with images and a weekly post, but from now til the end of the year, I’ll be putting lots of heart and soul into Wild Precious Life. If you’re feeling any tug to not miss a thing and your gut tells you this is for you, this is a big risk for me, and I’d be so thrilled for you to join me on this six week adventure!

Go ahead, let the ball swing, it’s time for everything to be gone now. The old ways, the old dreams, the old structures you propped up with your impossible will and foolish, stubborn determination. Your insistence is no longer needed. The same goes for your visions, your delusions filled with other worlds, other realities, other lives that only exist in the beauty of your untamed feral mind. Do not mourn, and by all means, do not cry, for this destruction is not for the purpose of suffering or pain or even the difficulties of dying, but for a clearing, a wide open space where something new and amazing can be grown instead of built. Building was never your strong suit, try as you did to adapt to this or that mode of construction. You are more like a sower, than an architect, as anyone who has seen the drawings on your napkins could have already told you, not to mention your half-completed buildings.

When did your mind ever conceive of anything in straight lines? Do you ever remember a time? When did you ever take into account the building codes or the classifications of certain materials?

That’s what I thought.

No, you have always been more of an artist, wandering around in the woods behind the houses, picking dandelions that could be woven into crowns for unsuspecting kings and queens who never really wanted to reign in your kingdom. No, you have always been more of a naturalist, examining mud for the properties required for sculpture. No, you have always been more of an adventurer, culling through unnamed and unknown fruits and vegetables at open air markets where you know deep in your heart, the ingredients are waiting for a fine and unforgettable stew.

Doesn’t that sound right?

Good thing for you, everyone already knows, though no one ever thought it would come to this. That wrecking ball thing? Most of the time, you just leave the building, before anyone knows you’ve slipped out the back door into the garden. But, no, now, things will be different. You will make announcements. You will say with your very own mouth the answer is no. Not this. Not now. Not ever.

Let the ball go. Let the rubble pile.

You are lighting a match, you are letting it drop and with that fire you will burn every old and stubborn thing in you that wanted to bend the world to your liking. You will burn every impulse you had to mold when the best thing would have been to break and let the pieces fall where they may. You will burn the part of you that insists on knowing, on seeing, of shaping when the deepest truth is that no one knows how a seed grows or what happens in the dark earth hidden from light.

This destruction is necessary and holy and beautiful, so let the wrecking ball come. There are stories waiting to be born in you. There are gardens waiting to be planted. There are the unruly curls of your own wild head that will happily bend to receive that crown of dandelions and in doing so you will feel no shame or embarrassment. Yellow was always your color.

The ones meant for you will come close to your side, you will not even need to call their names or sing them, the way you always do in the car when you think they aren’t listening or caring as much as you do. They will come close to you, the way your heart always felt close to them and you will accept your togetherness in whatever form is best for lovers, friends, family of the sort that feel as familiar and mysterious to you as the bright night sky. You will have an easy companionship, in the quiet spaces, and no one will say one word about that wrecking ball, they knew all along, your blueprints always looked more like storybooks, you were always meant for more unwieldy forms of creation.

So stand back, let it all go.
Don’t be afraid.
You cannot lose anything that was always meant to be yours.
You cannot have something when the only person who ever wanted it was you.

A new world is waiting underneath all that rubble and when you see the land underneath, you won’t regret being brave and you will know it wasn’t foolish after all, to let yourself be seen for who you really are.

This blog gets a major overhaul this week, as does most of my online work. So if the lines look crooked or this blog explodes in midair this week and disappears into oblivion, that’s why. Excited.

Just minutes til I have to run…at Camp Shutter Sisters with Trace and Myriam (and now Ria!). But I’m in a process of letting go of the reasons I create for why I was born, the ones that burden me and weigh me down. Here’s my new working list…feel free to add your own in the comments below.

To see and to be seen
To listen and to be heard
To touch, to taste, to feel
beautiful and rare on the earth

To travel, to wander, to seek
To discover, to explore, to believe
To arrive just in time
at home and belonging to those I love

To laugh, to sing, to dance
To feast, to kiss, to make love
To cry, to pray, to release
To heal, to calm, to sleep
To weep

To forget
To remember
To hope
To dream
To wake up
to love.

I’m in a faraway land at the moment becoming an oracle.
Just kidding. I meant to say a mystic.
Okay, kidding again. But something is happening, goddammit. Or I least I that was what I was hoping when I wrote this next paragraph a week or so ago…

My heart, the inside part of me that just got its hard outer shell, smashed into a kajilion little pieces, evidently has a real live girl living inside, and she is tiny and wise and tender and she knows otherworldly things that she knows now are best not to say outloud. So she keeps secrets and she hides in invisible places and lets her eyes reflect truths and she’ll lean her ear in to hear you say them when your eyes say you’re ready and you don’t want to hide anymore. And when you say them, her eyes shine and you realize you knew it all along and that maybe you were braver and more alive than you ever dared to think. After that it’s all up to you, because it always was from the beginning, but she walks with you anyway on windy paths, and lies down next to you in your dreams. And it is in that dream space that she hears her own voice waking her up to the soul of the world which speaks to you, too, and every other astonished soul just waking from a long and dreadful sleep. This is how she is and she hopes you don’t mind if it means she cries so much, life is so strange and unruly and impossible, she’s still learning how to let it flow through her, hands open, no grasping.

So that’s what’s happening right now.
In case you were wondering.
Light candles. Say prayers. Share songs. Send poems.

It’s magic.