Stay fog

and welcoming the blur

Human Stuff is a free weekly-ish newsletter. You’re welcome to share parts of this letter that connect with you on social media, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, ‘heart’ing, commenting, sharing, for helping this newsletter continue by being here. In the midst of so much noise, your presence with my words truly means something.

Upcoming Workshop: HEART SPACE, 9/6 from 10-12pm PST

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[ A song I’m loving ]

stillness in Point Reyes, 35mm film

The mornings lately are being encircled by coastal fog, a thick gray replacing the bright blue. Something is changing, slowly, if you notice close enough. I notice it in other places: kids walking to school after the lull of summer, the sunflowers beginning to droop toward their end after beaming tall, evenings suddenly feeling a tad longer, a drizzle on my drive to the forest town, the urge to burrow starting to reveal itself in my bones. It happens slowly, then all at once, like many endings and beginnings do. I find myself trying to track it all this time, trying to slow things down by really looking at them, by really witnessing each gradual dance toward something new.

I feel it inside myself, too, this slow change. I’m finding it harder and harder to share anything, to post anything, to offer up wisps in the midst of the mammoth we’re all moving through in our own ways. Parts of myself are re-emerging after laying dormant for years, dreams pointing me in dizzying directions, meditative paintings being made in the morning light, poetry I don’t yet know how to write being asked to be written, a more heartily-embodied presence in daily life, new parenting joys and challenges, relationships and land and unknown projects and presence demanding to be tended to with newfound leadership. All the while, I find myself inching toward distractions, toward checking out, toward the comforts I know that I also know I’m outgrowing. It is a tender thing, to walk through thresholds arms and eyes wide open. It is a human thing, to find yourself walking back toward what has been, even when what has been isn’t what wants to be lived anymore.

made beauty, 35mm film

Do you ever find the carefully-constructed parts of you, the parts you once desperately needed, crumbling in your own hands as you grip onto them far past their necessary lifetime? Do you ever wonder what to do with the open space that replaces what crumbled? Do you ever let yourself sway in the mysterious newness before needing to jump into something you can make sense of? Do you ever imagine the unknown not as something to fill in the blanks of, but as something to partner with, something to let be a marker that perhaps anything is possible? Do you ever let yourself simply be where you are, without jumping to the next place, and then the next? Do you ever notice yourself staying more and more here, and being a bit surprised by your own staying? Do you ever drop the agenda and seep into what it’s like to really be here? In all it’s horror and heart and hope? Do you ever let yourself reignite your desire to stay?

yawning yolks, 35mm film

As the fog replaces the blue more and more, I find myself wanting to contort into something consumable less and less. I want to stay fog. Stay strange. Stay in the liminal doorway that perpetually reveals itself. Stay unknown to myself not because I’m not paying attention, but because I keep changing. Stay open to not knowing what’s happening in the world not because I’m looking away, but because what’s next is a blur. Stay at the table when my family is at the table. Stay with my child when we’re being Buzz and Jessie. Stay with the paintbrush, the poem, the questions, the unpredictable. Stay with the new plants still growing taller, right beside what falls. Stay close to the question. Stay less palatable, less pinned down. Stay with the inkling to devote more time to creativity. Stay with the absolute gutting heartbreak of peering out at countless harms. Stay with the tenderness of feeling seasons dissolve and become. Stay with my distaste for turning our lives into aesthetics. Stay with the gift of being witness to other people’s capacity to become more of who they are. Stay with devotion. Stay with what is asking to be stayed with. I want to stay.

coming or going, 35mm film

Wherever you may find yourself as one season starts getting swallowed by the next, as impermanence once again shows itself as one of the only constants in this big swirl of hereness, know you, too, can change. Know you can morph into something new alongside the fog replacing the blue. Know it makes sense to cling with dear life to what has been, to what you’ve known… and know something will catch you when you finally let go. Know there is both grief and relief in listening to the nudges you’ve been distracting yourself from hearing. Know it is a beautiful thing to dip into your full humanity whenever you remember it’s there. Know how human it is to not always make much sense from the outside, maybe even from the inside. Know you are not meant to be easily digested, consumed on a schedule. Know allowing your full humanity is an utter rejection of the systems that try to contort us into forgetting. Know much can be revealed even in the fog, even in the unknowing, even in what hasn’t yet become clear. Know there is ample support all around. Know someone else will remind you when you aren’t sure. Know something is bursting forth somewhere, even now. Even inside of you, if you look closely enough.

Thanks, as always, for being here.

No links this week — just an invitation to go find something that catches your eye and linger with it a little bit longer.

West County gems

With care,
Lisa

And because someone recently called me out, I will remind you my new book, When the Ache Remains, is available now everywhere books are sold. Deep gratitude for all the support.

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Thank you for reading. Everything I share comes from my own heart; this publication, and all I do, is created without the use of AI.