Goodness gracious. It’s been so long since I’ve written you one of these missives that I almost forgot how to do it!

Do you ever think about doing something so often, and with such an increasing sense of urgency and pressure, that you find yourself absolutely unable to do it?

That was me, with this missive.

It isn’t because things are so quiet around here and I didn’t have much to tell you.

Or because I’m not making creative work at all.

The opposite, in fact–

life is swirling very, very fast right now.

In the Queen Sweep, we are cavorting through our homes, setting up systems, clearing clutter, making space for beauty to bloom.

(And once I realized I needed my own medicine, I employed all my Queen Sweep tricks on myself to get myself to finally sit down and write this– and lo and behold, here I am!)

Our family life is bursting at the seams at the moment. We have five kids who are all involved in one activity or another, plus two of them have jobs, plus birthday parties and dentist appointments and swimming lessons because water safety is pretty important on an island…and sometimes I feel like I spend my whole life in the car, driving them around, see above.

I’ve got these poems that are begging to be worked on, but also demand soooooooo much time and maddening slowness to coalesce into their proper shape.

But mostly, the simple truth is that I’ve been in a season of inhale.

This is a phrase we use a lot in Make Art Choose Joy, another thing that is zooming along. We’re trundling toward completion of our 7-month journey at an alarming rate, and the beautiful creative souls in the group are bursting forth with new creative work at a joyful rate that makes me actually gasp with glee. And in that circle, we have been talking about how as artists, we have to inhale AND exhale– which is to say, we can’t just keep churning out work if we aren’t also taking in new raw material.

But the same is true for all of us humans, of course.

Like Julia Cameron says, you can’t draw anything from an empty well.

And after a long winter of near-constant output, I needed to take a minute to stop and breathe in some deep, spring-scented breaths.

But I never meant to stay away from these missives this long.

I’m still experimenting with new rhythms and patterns, you see.

(That’s a diplomatic way of saying, I am still trying to get myself to do the damn things that matter the damn most in spite of all the other damn things that need to happen.)

For years, I wrote this missive every single week, come hell or high water. But I simply ran out of juice at some point, and I hated repurposing old writing for you; it felt like I was cheating on you.

I wanted to send you only the freshest things. I wanted to wait and write you when I had something to say with real potency.

Was I even allowed to do that?!? This felt so scandalous and liberating, to wait to be moved by desire instead of a schedule.

So I stopped writing weekly!

It was incredible!

But then…

well…

I sort of stopped writing these at all.

SIGH.

So somewhere in the middle, perhaps, is my sweet spot.

A rhythm that isn’t rigid, but still has some dependability to it.

Some level of structure is always helpful to me, because left to my own devices, my sparklebrain tends to wander a bit.

And one glimpse at the news is enough to send me reeling into despair every day of the week.

It takes all my routines and practices (my Compass, daily Swoops, energetic grounding, complex shared online calendars, accountability and lists and support and flowers on my table) to keep myself from sliding into the doomscrolling these days.

And that’s important because giving into helpless despair (we’re all fucked, there’s no point) isn’t an option I will allow myself. Grief? Yes. Sorrow? All the time. Heartbreak? Without question. Rest? Oh yes please.

But I’m not giving in. I still believe in us, no matter how many horrible things we do. I believe in our capacity to heal things, to change ourselves, to grow bigger than we thought possible.

And when I feel utterly hopeless about humans, I go breathe in the earth. She keeps reinventing herself for us, year after year, in spite of the fact that we can be so awful to each other.

Right now, as I type this in front of an open window, my eyes are wandering through the forest that is my back yard. After the long dark months of winter, I’m simply feasting on all the bright green.

My friend gave me bright orange tulips yesterday, and I was so moved I almost cried. I swear you could hear them humming.

And right now, a single daphne blossom that grew in my very own yard perfumes my whole room with the sweetest lemony fragrance– I wish I could send it to you.

The courage of growing things gives me strength. It makes me believe in hope. In spring. In us. That perhaps we will yet, still, collectively bloom into our most beautiful selves.

Maybe we’ll start where we’re planted, yes?

Inhale, exhale. The plants do it all the time.

Maybe we can too.