Everything I’m doing these days is counter spell work. These are hard times. Weird times. Mean times. I’m getting up each morning and writing something for myself —to unjumble the thoughts and words and to untangle the worries. I’m not sharing most of what I write now—anymore. This work is my medicine. It isn’t about connection or commodity. It’s about unraveling and reorganizing and clearing my head and unburdening my heart. It’s a way of acknowledging the absurdity of life right now. It’s about helping me find direction and purpose. I realized that the things I started out sharing here were important for me to write but not for you to read. This work is part of my creative process. It’s not all meant to be given away. I blame social media for that perverse impulse to over share. At a time when I was broken and tired, I became untethered and I became an unfocused and rambling woman. I’m remembering how to edit and curate my offerings.

I go to my studio to work every single day even if I don’t feel like it. The walk from home to studio is good medicine in itself. It gets my body moving and stills my noisy brain. This act is my way of pushing back again the powers that shouldn’t be. I spend my days listening to music and making, making, making… The act of being in my weird, wonderful way is my act of deviance— my way of fighting the monsters that are dismantling norms so violently and with so much cruelty and contempt.

I’m having guests over to my new studio to share tea and conversation. Sometimes we draw or stitch or listen to music. Making art side by side feels important— soul feeding. I’ve been in a place of solitude and grief and anger for so long that I’ve become a different person but braiding together my practice of making and conversation and communion for the sake of growth and wellness is helping me breathe easier and move deliberately and creatively again — even in this ridiculous times. It’s helping me find my way again.

I don’t know what the future holds for me, my work, my country. I am bruised and tender from being knocked down so many times over the past few years but as long as I can keep getting back up and righting myself and working to build beautiful things out of broken things as a way of fighting waste and wrongness, I’ll keep starting again and again and again…