This is the Thing: Year One

Some writing about writing.

This is the one year anniversary of This is the Thing. This thing here, you’re reading. *Hurray!*

The internet makes anything is possible. It’s never been easier to have people read ones writing. Cynically, this can mean that everyone is a writer—spoiler alert: everyone is a writer. We also have so much time to consume, which when consuming endless content isn’t necessarily great, but what a gift to not have to spend all of our waking hours doing manual labor simply to get enough food and water for the day like many, many ancestors had to! And, even while they were doing that, they were storytelling…

I came here because I was burnt out and bored of the constant barrage of bite-size, junk content on Instagram, and didn’t feel particularly creatively compelled by the UX of MailChimp. Neither felt like a storytelling portal. This does. At least to me. At least for now. And for that, I am very grateful.

Dripping the words of my mind chatter though the channel of my fingers is alchemy. Jia Tolentino (a writer I’ve always kept in my periphery as some mark in the sand of what is possible “at my age” ever since she became a staff writer at the New Yorker when she & I were in our late-twenties) recently said “Ideally, a person should surprise herself every time she writes anything.” All of a sudden, there are these words on a screen, and something that was all raveled up unraveled. Having the ability to organzine my thoughts, and go back over and edit them— this pace, this space, is so often erased in our digital-forward, new! more! now! culture. Not everything has to be instant.

I remember reading what I thought to be a very mid-at-best book about ritual around 2019. I turned to the back and read the little blurb about the author. Turned out he went to Ivy League institutions for both undergrad and grad school, was on the Board of Directors for a fancy, well-respected spiritual organization, and had a very large podcast audience. My heart sank. As if this insane list of credentials was the only path to publication.

Before this, I’d long been a “secret” writer, which is to say it was never a word I reached for to describe myself. Surely some imposture syndrome and a little bit of codependency played into that. I always had friends around who were literal English majors, or getting their MFAs in creative writing, or where ghostwriters or copywriters, or had published literal books. Me? I just wrote sometimes. I wasn’t getting paid for it. (Ouch, the thorn of capitalism thinking if you are doing something you aren’t getting paid for it doesn’t even count!) It was also a sacred practice. To me, from me, for me.

It’s overflowing now. These words and stories are mine like my face is mine: they’re not mine, they belong to many. This isn’t really for me to hold onto. It’s storytelling as an emergency. Sophie Stand says that we have an antibiotic problem in storytelling: it’s simply the same thing over and over again. We need a probiotic approach. We need different stories, more stories. Fermented, dank, bubbly, alive stories. Yours and mine. There is room for us all.

Thank you for reading. I’m grateful that you do. I’m grateful for this space to write about anything from my work to prayers to vultures. You’ll see an option to become a paid subscriber at $5 a month or $50 a year. You can also support my work by liking my posts or sharing them. The paid subscription comes with zero additional benefits— though it is deeply meaningful to me. It is for those who want to give extra encouragement and support me, my work, my penchant for organic grass-fed/grass-finished beef, and my commitment to moving money through the hands of women. Paid subscriber or free, you have equal access to all content.

Poke around in the archives…

Ancestors: How I came into deep relationship with my ancestors (my inaugural post), what’s spookier than talking to dead people, what is Ancestral Lineage Healing, what are trusted powers, why one might consider Ancestral Lineage Healing, all about altars.

Prayers: A prayer for what’s possible, when you ask an animist to say grace, to let the darkness hold us, for coming home to yourself, for the dead.

Grief: What is grief, why grieve, and how to grieve, meeting an exiled part, confronting my childhood sexual abuse.

Intuition: the mysteries of mediumship, getting back to the roots, right-sized intuition, returning and being known, honing intuitive perception.

Sundry: On self-deprecation, death as a rite of passage, a letter to be beloved: the desert, longing to be a mother, winter solstice ritual, 2023 recap, relating with other than human kin, when women gather, relocating from the desert to New England, 2 years sober, why I hate spring, a love letter to vultures, death spirals as an invitation to lose our way.