Closing a year

How writing here has shaped me

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A song I’ve been loving:

Stormy Santa Cruz, my old home, on Polaroid film — 2012.

This week’s Sunday Letter is going out on Friday again to create more spaciousness this weekend, the last of the year, the last of my family’s time off together before my partner returns to work. The regular Sunday schedule will resume next week :)

In February of this year, a few weeks after my book came out, I wrote pages in my notebook with ideas for a new newsletter format on Substack. I had been sending a monthly newsletter for years through a different platform, but had never committed to really developing a regular practice of sharing my writing off of social media. I was craving a space where my writing was put front and center, without algorithms and distractions and urgency. I wanted to take my writing more seriously. I wanted to spend more time and energy writing. I wanted to get better at it, deepen it, lengthen it, share it with devotion and consistency. I wanted to trust it’s value. I wanted to listen to what I had to say, to what was itching inside me, to what was asking to be shared. I started this format of Human Stuff at the beginning of March and have sent out weekly letters ever since.

Writing here has become an anchor and a mirror, a steady rhythm and a reminder of what matters, a guide and a practice of self-trust. It’s become a starting point and a landing place. It’s become a ritual and an invitation. It’s become a place of exploration and experimentation. It’s become an outreached hand and a community of hands reaching back. It’s become a lot more than just a place for my writing.

Writing here has been humbling and scary, igniting and challenging, connected and intimidating. I’ve questioned my work and my place in things. I’ve looked around at the world and thought, “why am I still sending out this little newsletter every week? What’s the point?” I’ve not been the most profound or the best or the smartest or the wisest writer here. I’ve faced my own internal critic, my own felt sense of imposter energy, my own doubt. I’ve confronted the difficulty and fear of committing to something I love to do, publicly, with no guarantee of an outcome.

But through continuing to show up for my writing, I’ve remembered — what we share doesn’t need to be everything, or fix everything, or solve everything, or reach everyone. It doesn’t need to be the most meaningful, the most important, the most seen or liked, the most anything. It doesn’t need to change the world. It doesn’t need to be the first or best. It doesn’t need to hold all the answers. It just needs to come from an honest, genuine place — from a felt sense of doing our best to contribute in the ways we’re able to — from the love of it — from the desire to do it — and hopefully by choosing to show up for it, it creates some tiny spark of light in our own tiny corners of the world.

With all that, I’ve never felt more sure that writing is what I’m meant to be doing. I’ve never been more certain that writing brings me more alive, that it pushes me to notice and feel and explore and question, that it brings me closer to the edges of myself and the world around me. I’ve never enjoyed my writing more. I’ve never felt more connected to my own words, to the process and practice of making sentences, to the embodied experience of turning my world over to a blank page and trusting what unfolds. I’ve never been more okay with the uncertainty of it all, with no longer needing to strive for perfection in anything I share, with not being the most unique or profound or exciting, with not having an MFA or the most writing skills, with not being for everyone, with embracing my own mediocrity, my own smallness, my own boring bits, my own ordinary self.

I’ve weaved words here while moving through some of the biggest transitional periods of my life thus far. Writing has held me while navigating the depths of my own human experience, while trying to hold space for what was, while missing what used to be and not knowing where anything was headed. I’ve leaned on writing to hear myself more clearly, to notice what wasn’t noticeable until I looked closer, to upturn stories that were running out of steam. And I’ve let writing return me to what is true, to the longings swimming underneath the surface, to the fears and desires co-mingling, both asking for my attention, both telling me something important.

Through my Sunday Letters this year, I explored and examined so much —

I quit my private practice.
I let myself not be the best.
I got a new diagnosis.
I moved through my first full year of motherhood.
I embraced being ordinary.
I got honest about my longings.
I examined what a right-sized life looks like for me.
I turned 35.
I visioned what could be.
I practiced hope.
I trusted myself to be in the depths.
I paid attention.
I practiced staying in the life I have.
I made space for all of it.
I was tired.
I remembered how many times I’ve kept going.
I tended to grief.
I let the deep end be itself.
I reflected on life.
I explored my own integrity.
I let myself be a beginner.
I stayed open.
I lived with the unfixable.
I did less shapeshifting.
I showed up in spite of fear.
I allowed ease.
I held compassion for my safety mechanisms.
I honored my softness.
I showed up as my true self.
I honored my loneliness.
I listened to my creativity.
I reevaluated my relationship with social media.
I reconnected with lost parts of myself.
I let go of thriving.
I nurtured possibility.
I practiced just living.
I went for it.

There is also so much I didn’t do. So much I didn’t start, didn’t finish, didn’t figure out, didn’t accomplish, didn’t express, didn’t share, didn’t allow for, didn’t know, didn’t achieve. There were micro-moments and snippets of life that don’t get seen by anyone. There were tears and what-if’s. There were missed opportunities and missed connections. There were joys and delights, beauty and togetherness. There were lessened capacities and bigger questions. There was the living of a complex life.

Through and in and beyond all of it, I’m so grateful for this space. I’m so grateful for your presence here, for choosing to read (and some pay) my work, for valuing what I have to share and for letting it take up even a few moments of your precious time. I’m grateful for trusting the call to write — to mark my writing as an integral part of what I am here to do. I’m grateful for the practice of reciprocity I’ve opened myself up to here. I’m grateful for showing up for what I want and letting it teach me, letting it reach you. I’m grateful for whatever will unfold next, knowing it isn’t my job to force or control any of it but to get out of the way and allow it.

May the new year bring a deeper knowing of what we love.
May the new year bring a bigger understanding of ourselves.
May the new year bring a resting in who we already are.
May the new year bring a devotion to our own longings.
May the new year bring a close to what is no longer working.
May the new year bring a choice to listen to the rumbles within.
May the new year bring a reminder that right now is all there really is.

Sending you care and warm wishes during this time, no matter how you mark or don’t mark it, believe in or don’t believe in it, care or don’t care about it, enjoy or don’t enjoy it, celebrate or don’t celebrate it, reflect or don’t reflect on it. And may I remind you that at the turn of the calendar to another year, it’s still Winter. So while there may be pressure to all of the sudden be ready to jump into go-mode on January 1st… permission to stay cozy, stay slow, stay inward, stay soft in all the ways you need to.

Thank you so much for being here this year. It has meant the most. More to come.

△ Freedom Beyond Selfing

△ Maggie Nelson working with and against constraints

△ How to Identify What You Enjoy

△ I loved this piece of writing from the brilliant Shira Erlichman:

It's time to let go & live

△ This Is A Photograph was one of my favorite new records of 2022

△ Solo drives in favorite places

The road to/from Point Reyes National Seashore

△ The Radical Hope of Patti Smith

△ Art as Living Amends — Nick Cage on Creativity as an Instrument of Self-Forgiveness and the Necessity of Hope in a Fragile World

With care,
Lisa