I am imagining we are sipping tea together somewhere filled with light. I am wanting to write this newsletter as one long poem— to distill the essence of what it’s been like.
Today, back in the East from New Mexico.
A transformative trip. A trip celebrating grief and loss from 6 months ago, the kind of grief that asks you to put your hands on the earth and wail. I’ve decided to move towards that instead of away—
Sometimes, grief is just grief, and sometimes, in the center of the pain there is a relief that comes, like laying back and floating in still water.
I’m thinking now of Brandi Carlisle’s Song, The Eye.
I am a sturdy soul.
I am thinking of these sovereign prayers with Abigail Bengson and adrienne
marie brown.
How lucky to be accompanied by both this week, in the heat and the wind of the arroyos. I saw vultures circling. Watched lightning split the sky, scary close. I heard Patti Smith play under a full moon in a thunderstorm.
I felt many versions of myself closer than ever, past and future.
I felt adrift.
I felt afraid.
I felt the wideness of love, celebrating a partnership that has forever changed me and challenges me and is beyond what I could have ever imagined.
There’s a mantra I love that goes, it’s like this now, to keep me coming back to the present moment.
It’s like this now: on my knees in the desert, weeping. It’s like this now: each prick of the needle during a new tattoo, marking my hands forever. These hands, which do the work of my life, the work of loving and writing and cooking and tending. This tattoo says: yes to life. Yes to timelines beyond which I can always see. I trust. I trust. Thank you, Talia Migliaccio.
I’ve collected rocks from the arroyo with these hands, they are on my bookshelf now. I look at them and am changed by the looking. I feel more in love with life than ever, and more trusting of it, though very unsure of what the details of that life looks like.
Except for the right now— tea, walks, slowing down so that I may listen with more center.
It’s like this now. I love you. And always wanting to hear how you are— my inbox is open, even if I’m slow to respond.
Raisa