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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.

–John Burroughs

me with my dad, 1968

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 am about to find out.

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.

These words from my dear soulsister/sage/forget-me-not of a friend have given me tremendous comfort:

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.

Nineteen months ago, I found myself in San Francisco holding Ben, my dear friend Andrea’s brand newborn baby boy. Andrea was taking a quick nap to recover just a little from a sleepless night and whirlwind birth and Matt was conked out on the hospital couch of the most beautiful hospital room you’ve ever seen in your life. We had no intention of me being there for the actual birth–our plans were more along the lines of come-play-and-nest-with-me-before-the-biggest-event-of-my-life, but as fate would have it, I arrived not too long after Ben was born–just in time to have the deep privilege of holding this oh-so-fresh baby just when his brand new parents were ready to steal a moment a sleep.

I remember holding Ben in the corner of that delivery room, trying to be so quiet so as not to wake Andrea and Matt, but trying to move around just enough to keep him settled and calm. I remember feeling so responsible to represent humanity kindly to him in his first few waking moments and hoping so deeply that he could feel in some tangible moment how tender he was, how truly worthy of love and the most generous, open-handed care.

I haven’t thought much about that moment since–that is, until I got off the BART train and started walking down the street only to see Andrea and that sweet baby Ben several blocks away making their way down to greet me. Earlier in the day, my sweet Kelly Rae had asked me if I was so looking forward to seeing Ben and I had drawn a blank, thinking mostly of not being able to wait to see Andrea. But here, watching him make his way down to meet me, not really remembering or caring about seeing me either, I started to cry.

I don’t know what it is with me these days–or maybe I know and it’s too quiet and personal to say–but I am so aware of how fragile we are when we come into the world, how desperately we need to know in those first few moments that we are loved, that we are not too much, that the world will hold us and carry us and keep our hearts safe, no matter what happens.

Our parents take us into their arms and do their best to let us know all these things and more. They are as desperate for us to know as we are desperate to believe it, and so we agree in our souls to stay together forever on the inside–no matter how hard things get or how much we feign to have divorced them in our hearts. We spend our whole lives trying to get back to the beginning–that place before we could feel the absence and the gaps–when without words we knew the truth of how complete and holy we are.

By some stroke of magic or kind miracle of God, these days I find myself acutely aware of the beginning, mine in particular. I feel as vulnerable as a newborn baby and it’s hard not to even see a baby without crying. Remembering Ben in my arms is another way of remembering me, and I want to honor that knowing with all tenderness and strength. How desperately I need to know the world is safe! How deeply does I need to experience the truth that I am never alone!

People sometimes say Africa is the birthplace of humanity or the heart of the world. Both things are true for me at the moment. In that sweet place, the hard shell of my soul cracked open and I discovered a baby girl inside. I am holding her now. I am telling her now quietly in the corner of the delivery room while the whole world sleeps that she is a treasure, a thing of rare beauty on the earth.

I am promising her I will never, ever let her go.

self-portrait by the amazing Madeleine, seer and sage

I’m doing lots and lots of personal writing these days–you can see a teeny tiny sample on my latest post on Shutter Sisters. I have never been one to hold back when I’m writing–if I have to something to say, you are more than likely reading it. But still, it feels so good right now to have a stack full of pages all to myself and to let myself be so bold in those lines, so free.

Because my natural desire is to have my writing out there, this makes me think about publishing. Earlier this year (without thinking) I told Karen Miller that I would do two things this year that would make this year different from the rest: visit my friend’s children in Rwanda and pursue publishing. At the time I had no idea whatsoever that going to Africa would be remotely possible, and look what happened there. Why not write a book? Or at least knock on that door and see who answers?

So my random question for you all is this. If I were to throw together a book proposal in the next 48 hours to take to San Francisco (or at least a shell of one that would be good enough to get my foot in the door) what kind of book do you wish I would write? I’ll take your input seriously, since you know better than the rest what kind of writing you read here resonates with you.

I’m throwing this out there on a whim, right now, because believe me, after the last three months I’ve had, stranger things have happened. Whatever you’d like to say by way of advice, I’ll take it.

Things have been a little quiet on the blogfront here, mostly because I’ve been in a major overhaul of my psyche since coming home from Africa. In the old days I might have called this being in the soul repair garage, but this time around it feels more like being born. Everything is a little bit fuzzy and I don’t recognize where I am exactly. At least not yet.

I’ll be skipping all the the gory details and doing my soulwork quietly behind the scenes, sharing only when it makes sense for you to read my process as much as it does for me to share it. (I say this not to judge or editorialize on anyone who decides to blog otherwise because God knows there is tremendous power in that kind of transparency, but as a way of setting up a little boundary for myself at a time when boundaries are key. I hope you understand.)

What’s strange to me now is to read the archives and look over all the art I’ve done over the last year. I’ve always found it kind if not a little strange when people respond emotionally to my work. Most of the time I create without thinking and then examine the final product with a certain kind of shock and awe. I have no idea where these things come from and hope they make a difference. That’s usually the end of that. But this week, I can see that so many things I’ve created were little pieces of wisdom that were meant first and foremost for me. Like this piece:

Looking at this, I know without a doubt I am the baby in that picture. I didn’t know it until just now and it feels like a gift to have something from my own hands reminding me all I have to do is wait.

Whatever is happening to me right now, I’m aware that I need to let go of all the ways I busy myself, all the ways I distract myself from being quiet inside. Part of that means giving the power back to the people in my life who are counting on me, especially the dear ones who are happy and eager to take it. Odette is first and foremost on my list. If there was ever a woman who was capable of managing her family, overseeing their finances and making sure the widows and children have everything that they need to be safe, secure and cared for, Odette is the one. For this reason & because of the kindness of a friend, I am bringing Odette to Blogher next week, so those of you who will be there can meet her for yourselves, hear her stories in her own words, especially the ones we can’t tell on this blog. I cannot wait for you to meet this woman who in so many ways has saved my life.

I still have many Rwanda stories to tell and will do so, but you having a chance to hear them directly from Odette will make an enormous difference, I know it.

I can’t tell you how truly grateful I am to be at this moment in my life. Everything is changing and I can feel all the ways my soul is trying to be born. It is not easy or neat or clean, but it is real and for this I am deeply thankful.

This is Goreth’s daughter Bella in one of Myriam’s JOY jerseys. It was way too big for her, but she had no desire to wear anything else. Happy Fourth dear ones! Here’s hoping you have all the courage you need for whatever journey your soul is taking you on these days. I’m hoping the same for myself.

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.