Ten things is a writing ritual I do at the end of each day. The prompt is simple - write down 10 things from your day. They could be moments, words you thought or said, things you saw, stuff you ate. They reflect a moment, a season, a lifetime. Here is my weekly round-up from this past week:

1. I work on my book and feel like Guatemala is way better. Now it’s time to shape Peru. I need to add an essay about the birds. A call back to the prologue I didn’t even know was there! It makes me happy

2. The rosewater bottle falls out of the trash and shatters near Alexander. My nervous system feels shot.

3. I tell her about the dream and she says it’s alchemy. And that I need to find images of the mother. What’s the opposite of having to deal with it? Something more complex. Holding the opposites creates the tension for music to be played.

4. Nobody gets married on Love is Blind and I can see why. I wouldn’t want to marry any of those men either.

5. I go to yoga and it feels so good to move. I think about how I want the room to hold me as a mother. How I want to look out for things that will hold me as mother and I make a list. I note the candle, the yoga teacher, the tree, the sky. I have the thought again that how do we know that earth is not a womb and death is not birth?

6. Miso soup with salmon and cucumber salad for lunch. Red lentil pasta with beef and sauteed green beans in ghee for dinner.

7. We go to the passport appointment. There is nobody there but the employees. They make us wait until exactly 10:45 and then the same employee helps us. We get the picture on the first try. She smiles at him and compliments his eyes.

8. I come home and he’s anxious a noodle might be stuck in his throat and he might have to go to urgent care. I tell him it’s anxiety.

9. I go to Starbucks to work on the book and get halfway up the mountain and I’m not sure how I’m gonna climb back down.

10. He whisper reads me a GK Chesterton essay on marriage while we both sit in the playpen. I put my head on his lap. He tears up at the end of it.

Ten things is a writing ritual I do at the end of each day. The prompt is simple - write down 10 things from your day. They could be moments, words you thought or said, things you saw, stuff you ate. They reflect a moment, a season, a lifetime. Here is my weekly round-up from this past week:

1. A savory breakfast bowl. I feel like a culinary genius. Oats cooked in chicken bone broth. Seaweed. Salmon. Sesame Oil. Green onion.

2. I try to sleep and have his body regulate mine so I can fall asleep, but then he doesn’t want to sleep so I rest in the room, and then I think I could be writing and that ruins it for me.

3. West African dance. I walk there and the sun is setting. The moves feel intuitive, but also like I have something to learn from them. They are fluid and grounded. I love the drums. They drum the whole class. And smoke weed in between. We have a circle at the end of class and touch the ground in front of the drummers. I’m not sure what it means.

4. I stand and eat the egg pita. He reminds me we’re not in a rush and I can take my time. It makes me cry because it’s what I needed to hear. Later, I cry on the phone with my mom and she tells me I look like the Mona Lisa.

5. I stand with him and finish writing about Antigua and abandonment. It flows better. Not perfect, but I’m in process.

6. She sends a New York Times article about Grass Valley and Nevada City. The article is pay walled but I ask her about it on the call. She says her kids are more Grass Valley. Where the miners lived. Not Nevada City where the mine owners lived.

7. I feel a period cramp and cry. There’s something significant about getting my period again. So much has happened since the last one in February of 2024. I got cut open since then. I want to trust that it’s coming. I’m craving dark chocolate and a banana.

8. I want to be close, but give them space. Close so he doesn’t cry. So he feels safe with the stranger that is his grandmother.

9. We sit outside under the stars with our lords. I don’t mind the dog. Alexander tries to pet him. I stare into the fire and notice it’s not red, yellow, orange like my book says. More blue and gold. They burn the branches from the tree he cut down earlier.

10. There are 8 of us at the Chai & Chat. We park the strollers like Tetris. We memorize each other’s names and baby names like a first and last name. Julia Savannah. Jen Arwin. Leya Alexander. I have them go around and say what they’ve been loving in this season and what’s been challenging. They thank me for organizing.

Ten things is a writing ritual I do at the end of each day. The prompt is simple - write down 10 things from your day. They could be moments, words you thought or said, things you saw, stuff you ate. They reflect a moment, a season, a lifetime. Here is my weekly round-up from this past week:

1. He takes him for a walk and it’s the first time I’m alone in the house in a long time. I don’t want to spend it working so I work a little and then make my lunch - salmon, rice, and seaweed and eat it outside with the sauerkraut in the sun.

2. It’s her birthday and he surprises her with a trip to Paris! When I tell Paxton, he says “don’t ever surprise me like that” and it makes me laugh so hard I cry.

3. He falls on the ground and hits his head and cries. It makes me want to cry too. To go from playing one minute to hurt the next. The face he makes at the shock of it. We buy another play mat for him to avoid more hard falls. It’s $70.

4. We walk by Trader Joe’s and decide not to go in. Then he says, we need snacks, so we go in and then I see a girl talking to the homeless man outside and I say is that Rachel that looks like Rachel and it is Rachel. From Michigan. She lives in our neighborhood. Why does this girl keep coming into my life?

5. I write and I’m just so tired so I watch Love is Blind with my family instead.

6. She gives me a mini Christmas tree that was in Grandma’s room and she says she would look at the lights in the middle of the night. I gladly take it. I tell her I saw someone wearing a Williams College tshirt at the farmers market and then she gives me one of Grandpa’s old Williams College hats. Treasured heirlooms.

7. He gives me his notes on the book while I’m running to yoga. He gets me like I don’t even get myself. The ending and the piece about falling off the cliff being my return to reality. The broken pieces getting stitched back together.

8. We talk while I’m in the playpen with him. She says Dad lost his phone and they searched for it for awhile. It ended up being in his bag. It brings up a sense memory of him always losing his car and searching the parking lots for awhile.

9. She cleans the washing machine and I make her peanut butter soba noodles and date syrup nut bars.

10. I tell him we can’t live this way with him always getting so angry in the car. He says, we can’t live without passion?

1. Only 3 people make it to the writing circle but we talk about place and space and mundane and rituals. Her stretch of sand, her washing dishes. We all are the same but different.

2. The approval paths. Net instead of gross. Dues checks. Reports. I wait to pay workers comp. I answer the question about ADP - you can’t send it anywhere other than your legal address. Clarity denied it as a mistake, he says he will re reroute it and will email an update within 3-5 business days. They don’t cover the copay of the ER for $200. I feel fine until I go on social media and then I think I need to do more.

3. I text him that I’m feeling shitty and he says, let me know if you need me to pick anything up for you, but that’s in like 7 hours.

4. He crawls in the grass and he looks so sweet. I love hanging out with him. But I’m not sure how to play, just cuddle.

5. The water isn’t hot enough in the bath. I eat oatmeal at 1:30 and soup and a peach the rest of the day. Recovery mode.

6. Moms at the coffee shop. One is a lawyer. One owns a condo in Palm Springs. We are not the same. I say I gotta run and then I do. And I don’t feel obligated.

7. In many ways I feel too young. I feel like a baby myself. I don’t know things. Do I know things?

8. Excitement about the book again. Luisa was 6 months pregnant too. Whispers of fate?

9. I cry in the chair and she gives me a hug. I let myself be held by her. She says she should have texted me. I say she didn’t need to.

10. The Voyage of Life by Thomas Cole. Our only favorite painting.

1. A perfect moment when I am nursing my baby to sleep and I can hear the rain fall and I let love and peace and joy bloom in my body.

2. I feel a little nervous during the class while speaking, but it goes well. Sacred objects are her dad’s ashes. And her mom’s earrings.

3. I eat pieces of chicken and stuff leaves of arugula in my mouth while we have a meeting I really didn’t need to be in.

4. I record the podcast and don’t know what I’m going to talk about. And then I discover something about myself while recording. I like showing up for the mystery of the unknown.

5. She comes in her green car and she cries seeing me and my baby, her hair is so red and vibrant and her eyes are so teal. She brings gifts of kombucha and jam and a baby snake plant.

6. We walk and I want to keep the perspective of my older self from my morning meditation, but we get into arguments again and I keep saying new topic and then we laugh.

7. She sends us out into the garden to get the tomatoes and I’m the happiest. I can feel the trees did what I asked them to do two years ago and protected grandma’s spirit.

8. I tell him “I don’t want to hang out with you anymore” but then when we’re home, we hang out, and I say “all I want to do is hang out with you” and we both have tears in our eyes and we hug.

9. We take a family walk to the monastery and sit in the rose garden. He sits in his stroller and smiles at us. We sit with our arms around each other and take in a moment of peace and hear our baby and the chipmunks squeak.

10. A yoga studio that feels good. I can be in the flow when there’s other people around. 18 other people. When the class starts, I have the sudden urge to teach and then during the class I feel like my 2016 year old self.

1. We greet the morning. A ritual that makes sense. I grind the black sesame seeds and add to the hojicha but it tastes terrible.

2. I end up being on the call with them for 2 hours. While taking care of him, while preparing lunch. And going to sit outside. He almost knocks my plate of food off my leg but I catch it just in time. Some sauerkraut drops on the screen.

3. Watching daddy’s dot inch home. Warming up the curry. Dream about trees falling over. I look in the mirror and see his tiny foot. His hand streaks, too. I think about what today must have been like from his point of view.

4. I thought they would realize how easy my job was when I was gone, but instead she says the opposite. She shouts me out to the group, saying we don’t even realize how much Leya has on her plate. I don’t even recognize myself if it’s full or not.

5. Chop wood, carry water. She reminds me that this is the point. So, why do I want more? Is more a myth?

6. I drink a chai in the bath and the water is the only thing that helps me transition states from the chaos of working all week and all the newness to having a moment to ground.

7. The answer about the jars starts coming through. The jars are a symbol of possibility and potential, containers for holding. I’m not sure how much of that I want to let go of.

8. We FaceTime her as she’s getting out of the shower. She says she can’t wait until we can teleport so she can teleport to us and I say maybe a plane will be faster before they figure that one out.

9. Her hands are magic and I feel held, if only for a moment. She tells me to take care of my c-section scar and mobilize it or else the lymphatic pathways will be blocked. How come they didn’t say anything about that? She said they cut along a major pathway.

10. At the end of the meeting, I am screaming. My body is hurting from holding him all this time. I put him down in the play pen so I can cry. I lay on the bed and cry. And I look at myself in the mirror and think I’m beautiful crying.

1. I throw a tantrum while making breakfast. Everything about this is wrong, so wrong. It’s not functional. Who designed this space?

2. My relationship to time. It’s a mantra that’s been running - I don’t have time. I don’t have enough. I am running out of time. She said to find the phrase that will work for me. I do have time. I have all the time in the world. There is enough. I know my body learned there wasn’t enough. Time and food. They’re related.

3. The rainbow outside the National Basilica. It’s just like 2 years ago when I saw the rainbow. It rains on his head and as always, we didn’t bring anything.

4. The moon is orange. The full moon lunar eclipse on Sunday. We walk home in the dark and I am short with him. Probably because I’m mad at him.

5. The lady at the plant magic stall at union market who stops us and notices me breastfeeding in the carrier and says to pax that with his haircut he looks like he’s gonna beat someone up. She says usually people like him and people like me don’t walk together.

6. They’re both retired and she plays golf and chess. She asks what we do for fun and I cant think of anything but eating, going to grocery stores and coffee shops, going to restaurants, and reading.

7. I don’t want to participate and yet I am.

8. I tell him in another life I long for the one where I live alone in the city and he says it’s probably not as great as it seems.

9. They bring out the first round - pickled vegetables and herbs and the hummus and labneh. The second is the grilled asparagus and halloumi and chickpeas. The third is the lamb shoulder that tastes like chuck roast and the final is the chocolate tahini mousse.

10. If you can’t taste the bitterness, does it still count?

Ten things is a writing ritual I do at the end of each day. The prompt is simple - write down 10 things from your day. They could be moments, words you thought or said, things you saw, stuff you ate. They reflect a moment, a season, a lifetime. Here is my weekly round-up from this past week:

1. I drive and pass by chicory flowers and Queen Anne’s lace and pass Amish in their buggies and farmsteads selling cucumbers, eggs, and tomatoes. I write down the corn labeled Dekalb because I want to know what it means.

2. We visit the ancestors one last time. Everything in the cemetery is green and the sun is shining. Exactly 150 years later, their ancestor was born here. We say a prayer for the dead, say thank you, and goodbye.

3. The books, the tinctures and teas, the clothes. In that order.

4. I wonder what to do about the jars. I think about how in the next place, maybe I won’t need as many jars. But I don’t know what to do, so I pack them all, wrapping each one in bubble wrap. But the question lingers - what if in the next place, I don’t need as many jars?

5. The neighbor calls to tell me they have monarch butterflies in their cocoon who are about to emerge. She invites me to go see them. I do, and their cocoon is green with gold sparkles on them. Her husband says, God’s design is so beautiful. I wonder if the butterfly about to emerge from the cocoon is a symbol, just for me.

6. I imagine how I would have decorated the space differently now that it’s empty but I can’t imagine another way. The space always tells you what it needs. I touch each wall and say thank you.

7. I’m not sure what to do with the plant and I notice it has spiderwebs all over it so I take it outside to give away. Someone else will take better care of it than me. But then it falls over and Paxton puts it in the trash.

8. When we are finally ready to go, we pull out of the driveway. Me in the red car with the baby in the backseat and him in the U-Haul, and our sweet neighbor is standing across the street and waving goodbye and says “God Bless You!” and I feel touched that this is the way it’s ending.

9. I sing a whole symphony for him in the last half hour driving over the mountains and it keeps him from crying.

10. We set up the blue chairs in our outdoor space and set him up on the bouncer between us and eat the strawberry mini cone. We made it. Our first night in the new home. I look out at the backyard and the trees and think, we’re going to become best friends.

Let’s write together.

1. I work and get sucked into a time hole. Where did the time go. How much time has passed? The caffeine from the matcha wasn’t good for me and I feel ill and overwhelmed with too many problems to solve. I take my break with my baby. When I return, the problems become easily solvable.

2. The way he laughs when his body is cuddled up next to mine and I pinch his little arms and little cheeks. Unbridled joy, just laughing.

3. Ideas swirl but don’t fully land. The visual of an in real life flowing river and when I meet boulders, I breathe my way through them. And in the digital world I set up streams to flow to my river. A digital river. A digital stream that connects to the flow of my river.

4. We both wade in the stream amongst the backdrop of goldenrod and the pink flower that looks like milkweed but isn’t and the mint plant that looks like Motherwort but isn’t.

5. I start clearing out the apothecary. Throwing away old herbs. Like the catnip and all of the ones that have been sitting in jars since August, 2022 when I started it. I have too many jars.

6. We go to Walmart for boxes and I end up buying two types of oatmeal too. We stress about how the top doesn’t fit. We feel like two idiots. We worry the moving won’t go well

7. He drops ice cream on his shoe and he cuts the smallest slice of apple pie and then starts scratching his back with a back scratcher and asks if we want to play games and Paxton says “she hates games”.

8. They go on their walk and I’m tempted to keep working, but I know it will be good for my spirit to not. So I pack ginger tea and the local berries from the market and head to the arboretum. I journal and drink and eat and then paint the trees - Michigan gave me my roots.

9. I see the banner that says “Welcome Class of 2029”. It’s a welcome party for them, a goodbye party for us.

10. Something about the patterns. How they keep returning. Like a spiral, a web. Completing? Finishing? The space of the ending brings back all the others, too.

If you want to start your own 10 things practice, I’m hosting a live writing circle starting September 9th called Mundane Into Magic, where we will take our daily life and turn them into art <3 Find out more here.

It always starts the same. Put on this writing playlist I created and write for 5 minutes. Write for 5 minutes about anything. The brain dump. Get the fluff out. Get the to-do lists out. Get it all out, so the underneath stuff can start bubbling to the surface. I tell myself it only has to be 5 minutes, but sometimes it’s longer. Sometimes I have more to say. This time it was more like 15 minutes.

Once I’ve done that and “warmed up”, so to say I do my writing prompt. Something else that’s pretty simple. No pressure. An easy way “in”.

This is one I’ve been using for a long time. It’s called “Start With Where You’re At”. The instructions are:

1. Make a list of 5 things on your desk (or wherever you’re writing, or whatever you see)

2. Pick one

3. Write about it for 5 minutes

And wow let me tell you - it takes you on a JOURNEY!!! I want to share my whole unedited journal entry with you. No edits. Because this is how I write. And to show you - this how writing practice can be. I cried while writing all of this. It brought up my unprocessed feelings.

This is the magic: starting simple, then letting the truth rise up from the everyday.

This is how you find the stories your creative soul is longing to tell.

This is what we will be practicing in Mundane into Magic, starting September 9th.

We’ll write together in real time, in community, so you actually do it. Because how many times have you told yourself you’re going to write but then you don’t?

How many times have you been too distracted or too tired to create because it’s easier to consume?

I get it, which is why I’ve created a space where we can all be held so that we actually show up and write. You deserve that time and space.

You’ll walk away with a collection of your own stories. Join me here.

To give you an idea of how it works, I’m sharing my full writing practice process with you.

This is long and unedited - but that’s the point. To show you how writing can uncover the magic in your everyday. Thanks for witnessing me in my rawest form.

Writing Prompt: 5 MINUTE BRAIN DUMP

okay time for me to write to hold space for myself im feeling like kinda angry

blah blah blah angry watching wednesday putting me in a mood. thinking about all of the things i have to organize put me in a mood.

yesterday feeling like alexander not going to sleep was a major problem. was excited about waking up today to go to the boro and im glad we did. the peach fig leaf croissant i really wanted was sold out from the person in front of me. i got the tomato danish it wasnt that good. i ate it anyways. then i got the strawberry matcha latte which was decent. then we waded in the creek with eva. shes nice. then we went to the cups n chai place and got those rotis and walked and the new school year had vibes. then came home and i was so tired. i watched wednesday while baby bounced and then he fell asleep for 40-50 minutes. his naps have been super short lately. it must be a developmental thing. then made some dinner - fish curry. pax made rice. meal prepped a bean salad - kidney bean, corn, cucumber, cilantro. its gonna be really good. i wanna eat that with some tuna fish and crackers for lunch. and then i will meal prep the squash with the rest of the greens? sauté them style? make a grain? do something with the beets? maybe steam them again? not sure. steamed greens. curry greens. food food food. the heavy food i ate yesterday didnt make me feel good. way too full. the grilled chicken sandwich from rosalies. and i ate it way too fast. and then today the two roti wraps i had were too heavy. plus all the rich food i ate this morning. made my blood sugar spike, etc etc. its fine every once in awhile which is what did. but idk. we also got two amish pies i want to eat with ice cream. just as a “souvenir from the amish”. how am i supposed to move this week? should i take thursday off? probably. i should take thursday and friday off. but still check an email or something. i dont want to do ann maries month end stuff. i had another week of work this week and i feel like it went well. having paxton here is helpful with baby. but when im on my own im just gonna have to figure it out. i don’t like that im the one in control. or do i like that im the one in control? idk. im scheduling yoga and a massage next week because thats what i need for myself. theres a sadness here. a sadness for the land. how i posted photos this morning about the transformation from maiden to mother. this transition marks a good bye to my maiden. my book marks my maiden. my book is about the transformation from maiden to mother. i was maiden when i started the book. i was in the beginning of mother at the end of it. it was the death of the maiden. i think i need to go to the woods and do a ceremony for my maiden. with the rose petals from my bachelorette. go to my tree. but why does my tree feel cursed? what energy no longer wants me there? i want to say goodbye to my maiden. especially the part that felt so unlovable, that hadnt looked at her sexual trauma, that felt like she had to prove herself, that didnt feel enough, that had to rush and pretend and be the biggest brightest in the room because she was afraid to look at her own shadow. my jaw feels tight. i have the coconut shells and rose petals from the bachelorette i want to give back to the earth. maiden leya. goodbye to her. but also im integrating her. im mothering her too. im giving her a healthier foundation. the maiden is also playful, carefree, unafraid of the world. takes risks. trusts blindly. im giving her safety now. safe arms. so she doesnt have to go travel the world alone and wonder if she will make it to her destination okay. im going to take care of her now. and mother mary is taking care of her. and she was taken care of. but she doesnt need to prove herself anymore. ive been doing my business for 8 years. since 2017. since the fall of 2017 at the oneill when i dreamed of starting an artist business. i had so many ideas. and no idea how to ground them into reality. just dreams. i took action, but hid. i took action, but did not share my blog. which was necessary for me at that time. i didnt want anyone to find out. i was hiding from myself. now i share and let people find me. i ache to be seen. i want to be seen. i see myself. and i know that i want to be seen. i dont want to chase, i want to attract. its raining now. that feels poetic. im really proud of myself. the external and internal transformation didnt happen instantly. its been 4 years since we moved here. there were a lot of ups and downs. there were a lot of twists and turns. there was a lot of mountains to climb. there was a lot of sitting in the well. and me now is just one version of me. me 5 months ago was a different version. i look tanned and beautiful now. but i dont want to base my self worth off my body looks. but i do like how my body looks and feels in this version. and it coincides with doing something about my appetite. curbing it. putting parameters on it. maybe putting loving boundaries on it. maybe thats another way to mother. not tasting and eating everything. but doing so in moderation. its like the mother holding the maiden. the maiden who wants to travel and explore and eat every type of food and have sex with everyone. and the mother is like yes and, we know how that makes us feel and its not good. you deserve to feel good. you deserve to be taken care of. to be tucked in at night. like when grandma tucked me in at night when i stayed with her when i was like 11 or 12. she taught me to cleanse my “orifices” all the places that have a hole. she gave me a bar of soap because i told her i didnt have one. how old was i at that point? too old lol. but she tucked me in and made me feel cared for. sincerely, a girl who really needed her mother. a girl who wrote that song for her mother. a girl whose pain i want to witness. and the i collect stories like seashells is the maiden transforming. the saturn return. the story told in a moment of time. but when we go back to the beginning, we understand why.

Writing Prompt: Start With Where You’re At

List 5 things on your desk:

1. brene brown atlas of the heart

2. russian matryoshka doll

3. gold framed photo of me and grandma

4. match box

5. anxiety away tincture

Pick one and freestyle write about it:

Gold Framed Photo of Me and Grandma

theres a photo of my grandmother and i on my desk. in it, my hair looks wild and free like the young lioness I was. my grandmother is wearing a red perfectly buttoned shirt with a collar popped, gold earrings, glasses, and her hair is perfectly white and coiffed. she would get it done every week. she has a bag - vera bradley of course. she had a lot of vera bradey bags. my aunt recently gave me one of her old vera bradley bags and we use it as a diaper bag. its a way for me to carry her. in the picture, we are standing outside of the wendy wasserstein cottage at the eugene oneill theater center. i remember her and my cousin came to visit me at the theater for an afternoon. how sweet that she drove up from new jersey to see me. she was proud of me. i know she was proud of me. we stood at the beach together. did we go to dinner together? i just remember she visited with lauren. what else were they doing? this was probably 2018 or something. the oneill. im more sad for the maiden i used to be. and wishing i could hang out with her one more time. i remember whenever i would have a night to myself i would order a dominos pizza and watch something on tv. i would give myself permission to not work, write a play, be creative, work on my blog, or my business. always running. always feeling like im failing. every once in awhile i would give myself permission to indulge. the whole pizza to myself. just tv, no watching anything else. probably getting high. i miss getting high. that was the maiden in me who didnt have a healed inner child. the maiden who needed it for the inner child to relax. the maiden who needed it to get pleasure, to feel full, to feel fed. she didnt know how undernourished she was. everyone always told her she was fat. this girl in this photo is not fat. not one bit fat. she looks beautiful with her wild hair. her boyfriend at the time would tell her she was too fat. that he was chasing other women because she was not enough. why did she stay with him? because she was used to breadcrumbs. its what her sisters talk about. they dont want the breadcrumbs. but they got breadcrumbs from their parents, so why should they expect differently? i dont know how to relate to that world. because now i have the whole meal. a husband who made rice while i ate coconut curry fish. a husband who cleaned while i made a mess. a husband who complained of the mess and said i shouldn’t complain because im so lucky to have a wife who cooks delicious things. and i said youre right, she does. and we argued because he was hangry, but we held hands in prayer at the dinner table, and we both laughed too hard when he had “a stupid leaf stuck to the roof of his mouth” and we cracked up. and he took our baby into the bedroom so i could write. so i could hold myself. so i can be reminded, my nervous system reminded, im not alone. and i didn’t make the transition from maiden to mother alone. he was there. beside me. always there, steady. 100% loyal. would never leave me. would never deceive me. he is right there, being patient with me. and how lucky am i to change the legacy of my family. to change the story for alexander. this purpose, is enough. this purpose, is enough. and i have to keep reminding myself, over and over and over. and i look at the girl with her grandmother. the grandmother who had to believe she always had to be put together to feel worthy. who still worried about her weight. one of the last things she said to me, actually legitimately the last thing she said to me was - leyas too heavy. little did she know, little did i know was i was pregnant. but her comment hit me in the heart. her comment stabbed me in the heart. i felt sad for me, but i felt sad for her. because why at 99.5 is that what she said to her granddaughter? why did she feel the need to say that? and why did it twist in my heart? always being told i was too fat. when i was never fat. thats what i see when i see old photos of myself. i was never fat. i was never fat. when sam sad it, when they said it, i was never fat. i was never fat. i was never fat. and then in michigan i feel like i became fat. i started to hate my body. i became fat. i didnt want to be fat. i judged my body. and now, im shedding. breastfeeding and hormones certainly have something to do with it. maybe my baby is taking all my stored nutrients for himself. an old woman stopped us on the street and asked is he breastfed and i said yes and her son said well cant you tell thats a big baby. and then some teens walked by and said thats a big baby. i dont think my baby is that big. he is healthy. but i dont think he’s huge baby. hes a long baby. when he was born and weighed 8.5 pounds they said oh hes a big baby! hes a huge baby! when the nurse did her random tests for how he was compared to his gestational age she said hes actually small for his gestational age. she said, i couldnt believe it i calculated it twice! i couldnt believe the numbers show he was actually small for his age when hes clearly so big! and why does it matter? also he was a pound lower the next day? all the fluids they pumped me with certainly went to him too. its just so stupid. but its the message thats there again. you’re fat! youre too big! when they’re not speaking truth. and how we internalize that truth. make it our own. i was never fat. i am not fat. my body might store extra fat because thats how she feels safe. so she can save it for later. thats really wise actually. thats really smart. i have a smart body. i have a wise body. i have a body that wants to keep me safe, wants to protect me. i have a maiden inside me who wants to taste everything that the world has to offer. who looks at the world with bright, wide eyes and wants to taste it all. she was starved and hungry and desperate for love. she was missing her mother abandoned by her father. she was desperate for love. she was starved. and under nourished. and now she has a mother who holds her. she has a father who is steady. she has a husband holding her hand. she is safe, nourished, fed, protected. her body can let go now. her baby can take some of the weight shes kept for herself. she shares her body now. gives freely of her body. her body is happy to give. her body has more than enough. her body is hers. her body cares for his. is there nothing in the world more beautiful than that? is there nothing in the world? thank you god. thank you goddess. thank you god.

i am so grateful

i am so fed

i am so nourished

i am whole.

Reflection:

At the end of writing practice, I wonder - what came up that surprised me? And wow, I didn’t know so much about my body would come up. Food and body and motherhood and ancestors and all of it comes up. The relationship to my body & food and how it’s changing in this new season. (I had to start eating differently because of gallbladder issues postpartum). The connection from the past with my grandmother and the comments she would make about my body. And the connection with my son and the comments I’ve heard strangers make about his body.

If I did some editing around this, I could write a full story on all of it, which maybe I will do in my next post to show you. But I write in this way to take the pressure off to write something “good” and just to write something true.

This is how we write the rough first draft.

All of this came from a picture of my grandmother and I on my desk that I see every day, but it’s only until I write that I truly see, you know?

Your stories are hiding in plain sight.

Join me for Mundane into Magic, starting September 9th and start uncovering them in real time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts - comment below with any questions or reflections!

1. I cry in the ocean and it’s nice because I can sob with people around me and nobody knows. I can scream under the waves too and nobody knows. A space to feel.

2. I go for a bike ride and get the Seafoam latte and see the Amish girls and then fall off the bike trying to save the latte.

3. I read about the Russian nesting dolls in the foraging memoir and think about how I had them as a kid and later when we walk into the Christmas store to find an ornament, they have Russian nesting dolls and the same one I grew up, with so I buy it. An instant manifestation in the most random of places.

4. A peach pit in the sand. I love the way my body looks and feels. I dive under the waves and listen to teen girls talk about their sports teams. Every version of me exists here. That’s what it’s like to return to a place. I think about how I’m meeting this place again, but this time as a mother. I feel sad for last summer when I was here and I didn’t know I was pregnant. How much I missed.

5. I wake up 10 minutes before yoga, take him upstairs and run out the door. The instructor has pink pants and pink eyeshadow. On brand for a business called Pink Pony Yoga. There is nobody on the sand this early, except my sister who is hunched over her laptop in front of the waves. I catch her eye when she gets up from her spot and I am in cat/cow and we both wave. When I stop listening to the instructor, she comes over and asks me if I’m okay. I dream about jumping in after in my clothes, but I only wade in and wet my face.

6. I walk to the spot I remember as where my Grandpa used to fish. There are benches dedicated to people who have passed and of course there’s her name - Barbara. Their spirits aren’t gone, they’re just everywhere now.

7. I play with Lucah and Sky in the water for the first time all week. I pretend I’m a sea monster dragon. Skyler tries to drown me. Lucah wants me to pull him in the water while he kicks his legs, but tells me not to fall down. The crab girl pulls out two horse shoe crabs in each of her hands. Her brother has a dead baby horseshoe crab. I look at all babies differently now.

8. We all swing and I feel like a little kid and didn’t know I could get moments like this as an adult. Swinging next to my siblings and my husband and our baby in the stroller. Feeling like I can touch the sky.

9. I write in the sand and it makes me feel better. To feel the itch of the poems come through. I do a watercolor of words for how I want the next chapter to feel and wish I had something that could tell me my future. I write, I know the words, but not the story.

10. In the dark car he says that I’m doing a great job and that he takes for granted how much I do for the baby. But that he sees how much I do. I’m grateful to be witnessed.

1. The smoke from the grill when we arrive and the sunlight behind the apple trees makes me feel so rich. This is wealth.

2. The promise of books and songs and family life.

3. Have more space for the thoughts instead of crunched.

4. I do the work fast, then I take the walk slow and know that I need to be present with whatever I’m doing if I’m going to balance all of these different things.

5. The empty parking lots and the gates around everything. We can’t get into the other churches because they’re fenced and locked. It’s a Saturday, but the roads are empty. Nobody is walking around. A big city but it’s not overpopulated. It’s the strangest place I’ve ever been.

6. You can tell we’re all here because of social media and for once I’m not mad about it, I’m part of it. I film them pour the matcha and so does the girl next to me. It’s the best I’ve ever had. When I leave, the girl in front of me tells us we have a cute baby.

7. At the Yemeni market called Dreamland I buy carob molasses and date syrup and pomegranate molasses and tahini and orange blossom water and sumac and dates and I want it all. The lady behind the counter is rude, but it’s okay. I put back the cardamom tea and get cardamom pods instead. He picks out a barley water drink. The men wear long dresses and the fruit and produce is overflowing and immaculate. The apricots and cactus fruit. If we lived closer, I would come here all the time.

8. Dad texts me. I tell him about Detroit and the book I’m reading on Cyprus. He says he owns it too. Something we connect on. He says he was invited to teach linguistics on the Turkish side. I ask what year and he says dunno.

9. We clear out the cabinet with all the mugs and wine glasses. We only keep 2, since we never use them. We get rid of the wife and husband mugs and the Table Mountain shot glass from Cape Town that I didn’t even know I had.

10. I say squeeze squeeze squeeze and squeeze him to my face and squeeze his little body against mine and it makes him laugh every time.

1. I see the baby raccoons on the left side of the road. I avoid them. But then the car comes and I watch her hit one of them. And I sob and I sob and I sob. For something to be alive one moment and dead the next. What about their siblings? Their mother? I let myself cry. And then I think - but why do I think alive is good and dead is bad? What do I know?

2. Every time I go for a walk I regret not bringing a basket to collect black raspberries. Instead I just eat them by the handful - whatever I can pick in the moment.

3. She massages me and tells me about how she should write a book called memoirs of a massage therapist for all the crazy stories people tell her while they’re on the table. She asks if he has my toes because usually the son has their mother’s toes. She’s right. She also says you can tell I have an arch in my feet from the dip in my back.

4. We both blow up the inner tube so I can have my solo time floating on the lake. I wanted to give up because I didn’t want to take the time but he didn’t let me. We take turns passing the baby back and forth while the other blows up the tube until it’s full.

5. I swallow the cherry pit and I am mad at myself that I was doing too many things at once that I didn’t even notice I had swallowed it. I just looked for it on the ground and it wasn’t there. I worry what will happen to me. Aren’t they poisonous? I worry more about myself now for him.

6. He tells the grandmas about the new job and you can tell they’re sad. I’m sad for them. She says if we stay long enough, they’re moving to wherever we are and she’s not letting him grow up without her.

7. I get out of the car and I see her holding my baby and her holding her baby and her pregnant with her baby and the 3 year old in her Queen Elsa dress and I start cracking up because how did we get here? How did we suddenly all multiply?

8. The house with a million dragonflies. Can I count them all?

9. In the morning we all go for a walk and I’m loving the weather and Spanish moss trees and the birds I’ve never seen and the pink plants. They talk about clothes they picked out as kids and I can’t remember ever having choices like that. My mom sewed my dresses. I wore what she made me.

10. Breastfeeding him in the pool once the sun goes down. The dream about him turning into a dragonfly in the water and landing on my third eye and turning back into a baby.

It feels like going on Instagram to look up something specific, totally forgetting once I’m on the app and then feeling kind of lost like, wait what was I going to do here?

It feels like looking for answers when I’m not really sure even what the questions are.

It feels like tabs open, clicking between my text messages, a thread with chat gpt on what recipe I’m going to make later, and tapping through endless stories of people living their best lives.

When I’m caught in these loops, I take a breath and come back into myself. Oh, there she is. Once I land, here, I reach for either my journal - the one with the stars on the front, or my laptop and open my notes app and I write.

I write without thinking, without editing, without judging. I just write and let all the thoughts flurry out onto the page out of me. I write about what I know and what I don’t know.

Writing is the practice that connects me to me. That clarifies the questions I’m seeking and allows the answers to arise, in their own timing.

If you’ve been feeling lost, searching, disconnected, too attached to the screens, come back to the simple practice of writing.

If you’re not sure where or HOW to start, I’d like to offer you The Creative Soul Practice.

It’s a 7 day guided writing meditation series. Every day, you’ll receive a 15 minute audio with a short meditation and guided writing prompts so you can start writing, without the pressure of feeling like you have to be “good”.

You just have to start and see what comes through.

This is perfect for you if you’ve been longing to return, but haven’t found the time, if it’s been too long since you picked up your journal or did your morning pages.

It gets to be easy. It gets to be simple.

You’ll feel calmer, more grounded, refreshed, connected, alive.

Find more info on The Creative Soul Practice here.

1. The softness of his hands and the way he touches me when he’s breastfeeding I want to remember forever. The softness of the palms of his hands.

2. I think about how today is an ordinary day that neither of us will remember but it’s a good day because we’re together.

3. On their walk I only have time to eat my dinner, clean up, go on my digestion walk, open my boxes which contain all the supplements I ordered, and do a replacement on Amazon since they sent the castor oil but not the castor oil pack.

4. We go around the table saying what we’re grateful for about this country. I say that we can flush toilet paper down the toilet, that we don’t have war on our land, that we have access to any kind of food, and the support and resources available in local communities. He says that we can order any book online, that we can drive anywhere and the roads aren’t that bad, that we don’t have civil war, that we have access to education, she says that there are pot stirrers that still make us believe in a democracy, the nature and land here, and that there’s no true censorship.

5. I would have spent $83 at the bakery for delicious things but instead I spend $83 at the craft store with her buying t-shirts we can paint with bleach, and watercolor sets, and glue guns and fake flowers, and a seashell stamp.

6. I watercolor as we talk. Fill up my mini page. The kitchen table is now filled with stuff and crafts and there’s no place to eat.

7. We go antiquing and I’m so glad we do. We walk around and look at all the treasures and think it would be cool to decorate a house this way. Marveling at old stuff - uranium glassware, cokes in coke bottles from Austria from the 1930’s. Endless creations. I almost buy the color toy I remember from our childhood but Paxton says that we don’t need it so I put it back down. I want the old turtle lamp but not sure if I’ll have the right bulbs for it.

8. We sing out loud together to entertain him and I’m brought back to when we were kids and how we’d entertain ourselves. We agree it’s nice to hang out when there’s no event happening. Then we just get quality time.

9. She has to redo her work on the measuring spoons but she says she loves that part of the process - creating and then destroying. I paint the fruit basket and decide to decorate the sides - strawberries, oranges, blueberries, and lemons.

10. I’m in the mood to cook so I make the vegan chickpea curry with beetroot and coconut milk and mustard seed and cumin and garlic and ginger and greens. With a buckwheat roti. I love creating food for my people.

1. I get on my hands and knees and I suddenly cry out - I miss yoga and my body feels it.

2. I edit the poems in the book and they’re starting to all flow more and make sense. I tell my husband and baby I love writing books! Writing books is so fun!

3. It is our two year wedding anniversary. We walk around the lake and talk about what we’ve learned in the last year. He says we’ve learned we are pilgrims on this earth. We both learned we work together well. Travel well, parent well, serve well. We were going to journal together but it’s too difficult with him so we just talk it out instead. We re-read our vows to each other and we both tear up. He mentions the blue jay in his vows and then we remember how we saw a blue jay at the lake and I pointed it out. A wedding symbol.

4. I’m overwhelmed with everything and I recognize I do it to myself. She asks me what will help me give myself permission to slow down? I say - there’s time. And she tells me her teacher used to say - there’s all the time in the world.

5. I make my dinner of asparagus, millet, chickpeas, and greens delicious by adding liquid aminos, lemon, and ginger.

6. He sets up the table and I can see his butt crack. He is breathing heavily like last time. He adjusts Alexander and says he had tension in his sternum area. He adjusts his feet and Alexander looks concerned. He says it was 15 minutes instead of 30 so it’s $23 instead of $43. Then I decide I might as well get adjusted since he’s here. He pushes on my chest and it hurts. He pushes on my ribs and it hurts. When I ask the total he says $22 so I say so 22+23? and he says no, only 22, I charge by time. It’s the first time I’ve complained about it being too cheap.

7. The sun sparkles off the water. We finally have a reason to use the watermelon bowl we got 4 years ago and have never used. The kids grab the watermelon with their hands and at the end, everything is gone, even the watermelon juice

8. They talk about parenting as if it’s gardening. Nurture and let it grow. He says parenting is like you’re the teachers assistant. God is the professor and you’re just the teaching assistant. It’s nice for my brain to see two parent households and although we don’t learn anything groundbreaking, it’s comforting.

9. I lay on the grass and it feels so good and it reminds me of Italy all of a sudden and suddenly I’m reminded of the Nutella cookies we ate last year and how I would immediately want to go get those from the grocery store to put me in the vibe of Italy, but I can’t, so I must transcend the desire and soften into what I’m really craving - sun and slowness.

10. I am sad when I see that in the rainstorm, the tree in the backyard has fallen. I am sad for the impermanence of life. But then I see a deer later eating it’s leaves since it can now reach them and think about how the cycle of life continues.

1. I take my white dress and the beaded necklace from Guatemala and the yellow dress and the bee herkimer diamond necklace my mom got me for the wedding. We take photos against trees and the peonies. I ask her about birth trauma. She says trauma is based on people’s world view. The Amish don’t get traumatized by stillbirth because they believe it’s in God’s plan.

2. A strawberry story - sitting in the June sun crying for a mother.

3. I just want to work on my book. I change the colors from green to blue and he says it looks like Hawaii instead of South America. The margins stress me out but then I find a flow. I read one poem and it says that I heard a siren at exactly 11:22. His birth time. Was he with me back then too?

4. He texts me “here” and I jump up and run down the stairs and am embarrassed when I realize he’s not here, here just at the hotel, here. A too eager kid excited about the crumbs feeling.

5. The third question my dad asks me is if I’m writing anything. I show him the poetry books I inherited from him. They were his in the seventies. He remembers the Coney Island one but not the Watermelon Sugar one.

6. When we get back from the walk, where she talked about the past, and gave excuses as to why he was not there, I want to scream. My stomach hurts and I try to poop but nothing comes out. Then the pain comes and I can’t get comfortable. I’m sweating and worried about how they’re out there. I cry because the people who never took care of me are here and even now they can’t take care of me. Paxton comes in and I feel better. Then I eat a strawberry and then they leave and another wave comes. I scream into the pillow. It’s so painful. I call her crying. She says to go to the ER. Instead I feed him and have Paxton hold me and we all fall asleep.

7. The pee is dark orange this morning and bright yellow at night. It’s not from dehydration.

8. In the hospital room, they haven’t let me eat or drink in 17 hours. I am standing and breastfeeding and my mouth is dry and I need water. Paxton presses a button to call the nurse. Suddenly they rush at us from all sides. I guess he pressed the wrong button. We laugh about it later.

9. They invite us over for beef and venison burgers. I explain that I can not eat anything, so I sit while they do. It is too hot. She takes me outside and shows me her garden and says she mostly grows tomatoes, basil, lettuce, and potatoes. But she pronounces tomato tomahto and basil bahsil.

10. First there was panic and anxiety, now there is sadness. I go outside and feel uplifted being in nature. A line comes through - the sun is a song.

1. I want to document my day in the life so I take photos of us. But each photo is just of me in bed with the baby. Nursing or sleeping. So I guess that’s all we did today.

2. We go to the farmers market and I buy rhubarb, maple syrup, beef bones, and 2 dozen eggs. He is annoyed every time because he doesn’t like people desperately wanting to sell things.

3. The cathedral is named Mary, Star of the Sea and it’s beautiful. I want to be called to something to look at so I close my eyes and feel the energy in my body and when I open them, my eyes first land on the lion and the wings and the book and I know it’s a symbol just for me

4. We watch the father daughter dance to “brown eyed girl” and I cry. He says he will do it with our future daughter when she’s older. When they do the mother son dance he says this will be me and Alexander and we both tear up. What will that day be like? Currently he is sucking on my nipple underneath the cover and I hope we are both lucky enough to see the day. This feels like a core moment and I tell him I hope I remember it.

5. It’s been over a year since I’ve seen her. Before I was pregnant. She saw the baby in the lobby with Paxton and I’m sad I missed their first meeting. She gives him an avocado toy as a present. I am so proud of her, it makes me want to cry. She made my theater dreams come true and that’s enough.

6. We can’t find the entrance to the lake at first, because we need to cross underground. A woman with a dog named Ginger tells us. We walk down the path of oak trees and they both sit, and I stand, watching the lake and we are silent for a moment. It’s so peaceful here. Later, a woman says she saw the northern lights, we would have been staring right at them, but you can only see them through your phone.

7. I ask him if he had a good birthday and he says he couldn’t have asked for a better day…except for the one he asked for and we both laugh.

8. We change his poopy diaper in the family bathroom of the second church. This one looks older and almost looks Russian. He drops a $20 in the candle offering. I light 5 candles - one for Paxton, one for Alexander, one for my grandparents, one for my brothers, and one for my Russian ancestors. He lights 7 and has to add more money at the end because he realized he wanted to light one for me and Alexander too.

9. We’ve walked 21k steps and when we get back my feet look like they’ve been through the coal mine. My shoulders ache. It’s almost like Rome all over again, but I’ve been carrying a 15 pound baby around instead of him being a poppyseed in my belly.

10. Lemon sunlight in a yellow dress. He interrupts my selfies by calling me - are they home already? But they see me walking and I catch up to them and he says I have a surprise for you and I say hi and he takes a few minutes before he smiles.

1. I tell chat - my brother ate my bagels and it made me feel weird. I’m not sure why it brought up so much emotion. It doesn’t matter and it does matter and it reminds me this is what having siblings is like - they just take the stuff you really wanted and then it’s gone but then you feel bad for them and want them to have the bagels too.

2. I take us on a walk to a coffee shop at 3 pm and it feels good to move. I stop to smell the roses and a kid waves at me from the window. I write down my ideal daily routine - walking 10k steps and moving 20 minutes a day and working 1-2 hours. I order the honey nut latte and an old man in front of me says “aw, a baby I miss those front pack things”.

3. The black and white cows on the side of the road. The place where our dairy comes from. The green mountains that look like Ireland by the sea.

4. They all order one thing, and I order three.

5. It is much too cold in San Francisco but we stop at the Russian cafe and eat steaming hot pelmeni out of plastic containers in the car and I get annoyed when he fusses because it’s too hard to dip it in the sour cream.

6. They yell over women’s basketball. I try to sit outside to get away. I don’t have any profound thoughts.

7. He already looks so big in his bouncer after a week away. Mom sends a picture of the empty bouncer and says she misses us.

8. We don’t have groceries, just meat in the freezer, and I like the challenge of making something out of nothing. For lunch - momofuku noodles with beef and peanut sauce. For dinner - chicken with peanut sauce and rice.

9. I organize and fold his clothes to switch us out from 0-3 to 3-6 months. There are clothes he never wore. Do we save them for the next kid or get rid of them?

10. I do the 20 minute c-section workout on Youtube. It’s easy enough to do with him so I decide to do it again tomorrow. 11 weeks in and I almost forgot I had a C-section. I put on the silicone scar sheet for the first time and do a face mask.