Hello, sweet friends. Thinking about you all as we move through yet another week. In my little corner, Ada Limón’s revelatory, wonder-filled collection of new and selected poems - Startlement - has been my constant companion. Some of the poems are familiar friends while many others I’m meeting for the first time and I’m savoring my way through them. If, as we talked about in our last issue, the act of writing is one of inherent optimism then, for me, the act of reading might be too. Finding something worth discovering in the words and ideas of beloved thinkers who wrangle their hope onto the page feels like a worthy pursuit during the best of times, and an essential one right now.

“Even when silvery fish after fish / comes back belly up, and the country plummets / into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still / something singing? The truth is: I don’t know. / But sometimes I swear I hear it, the wound closing / like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move / my living limbs into the world without too much / pain” - Ada Limón from  The Leash

The question I’ve been asking myself this week is how do we find hope in the face of so much not knowing. Because, the truth is: I don’t know. I don’t know what horrors or joys might befall my loved ones next. I don’t know what winds of change might blow through my door and transform my life forever. And it would be easy to freeze and contract in the face of that not-knowing; to make myself smaller. I have done this! This is a well-worn and understandable human protective pathway. And, at this moment, I’m trying to choose the opposite - I’m trying to thaw and expand and take up space. I’m trying to lean on the wisdom of my ancestors and everything they lived through for me to see this day. I’m trying to remember my resilience while also allowing myself to feel it all. I’m showing up, imperfectly to be sure, and also, isn’t there still something singing?

I’ve been listening to We Rise by Batya Levine and Resilient by Rising Appalachia on repeat this week. These are wound-closing songs for me. These are reminders that we can rise, “humbly-hearted”, but only if we do it together; only when we “show up at the table again and again and again.” I’m finding spaces to lean into community with folks like my friend, Fox, who has created the sweetest container for song I’ve ever taken part in. It’s helping me remember that, in the face of the unknown, I’m not the only something still singing. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe, right now, that’s a way I can move my living limbs into the world. 

“Look, we are not unspectacular things. We’ve come this far, survived this much. What / would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?” - Ada Limón from Dead Stars

Because even as I believe in creation as hope, I believe in creation in community as the best amplifier for that hope. So, how do we lean into each other during this time rather than away? How do we love ourselves and each other harder? How do we survive more and, in our survival, take someone’s hand and lead them into that space with us? These are genuine questions! And your answers will not be my answers! But I’m using these questions to remind and to guide me that connection is always a better move for me than isolation, that showing up is well over half the battle, that letting people in is inherently vulnerable and also inherently hopeful. To say, “here I am - offering a branch of my heart for you to perch upon, I hope you alight and stay awhile” is creation as hope.

And because, as Toni Morrison reminds us, “the function of freedom is to free somebody else,” if you have the means, I encourage you to consider donating to the GoFundMe set up to support Miss Diana, a preschool teacher in Chicago who was illegally detained by ICE last week. News of the way that ICE is invading and devastating communities across the country is such a clear example of the country plummeting into a crepitating crater of hatred, and I continue to be find hope in the ways others in those communities rally together and keep showing up. Folks like my friend, Jamie, who gathers weekly to bring song to people in a local ICE detention center. The true meaning of something still singing within that crater. If you’re in Denver and want to join, please let me know.

“The pulled-apart world scatters / its bad news like a brush fire, / the ink bleeds out the day’s undoing / and here we are again: alive.” - Ada Limón from Flood Coming

Community is one of the things I’m profoundly thankful for right now. The people in my life keep reminding me that, in spite and sometimes because of it all, here I am again: alive. I’ve been through some very challenging seasons in my own brain. Seasons where I wasn’t sure that alive was what I wanted to be. And here I am again: alive. I’ll be 37 this month and a friend recently asked me how I felt about aging. And my unreserved answer was: grateful. Grateful to be here, even when here is hard to bear. Grateful to be here in this pulled-apart world. Grateful to be here, again: alive.

It’s easy to roll my eyes at a gratitude practice and, truthfully, they can be trite and contrived in the hands of the wrong self-help books. And, besides community, singing, and poetry, the cultivation of an authentic practice of expressing thanks and reveling in delights has been buoying me. On harder days, aliveness itself may be the list, but I’ve surprised myself by finding moments of delight and gratitude recently in a November sky at twilight, a full moon, a toddler palm pressed together with mine, shadows dancing across the floor, a brilliantly red autumn leaf.

I’m close to wrapping this up but before I do - those who know me well know I love a prompt, especially one born from poetry. So, with Ada as a guide, a prompt for you: What is a small way you are giving someone comfort right now? And, equally importantly, what is a small way you are asking for comfort? 

If you feel called to share your answers, I’d love to hear them. In the meantime, keep loving harder. I’m so glad you’re here.