hey friends,

does it feel like the equinox? like a balance point, like spring? capitalism likes to sell us growth as uninhibited constant celebration, but half the time - more than half the time? all of the time? - growth is waiting. is not knowing which snow is the last snow or when we’ll see green again. not knowing which desires will have the conditions to bloom in the next season and which will settle into decay in the soil to nurture other things instead.

it’s excruciating. it’s generative. it’s contextual. love is a constant practice of patience, of letting yourself not know anything except which weather you are in each moment and which seeds you want to courageously plant, despite having learned the delightful false colonial binary that some plants are poison and some are pretty. the truth is, some things will feed you and some will feed other life. nothing that grows is wrong, but not everything can live in the same conditions, and not everything is ours to harvest.

sometimes the bravest thing to do is grieve how long winter has been and how much sincerity it takes to love something that isn’t here yet while also loving your own experience of not having.

i’m not saying i’m brave most of the time. but i appreciate the constant reminder and lesson, even when it stings.

stay warm and take good care of your seedling desires. just because something isn’t safe to plant yet doesn’t mean it’s not full of beautiful wild uncertain possibility.

love,

n

listen live ~ save the date

Nola bday show: Saturday, May 9th; evening; Mousetrap

listen at home ~ songs for spring

Bloom: love like the growing, even when we’re nowhere near the light

little fire: funny the things that grief ushers in, the tenderest places that I’ve ever been

How far: if the best thing in life was to be understood, I’d kill for it if I could

Keep each other (on patreon - free): on state violence in Minnesota through the lens of mental illness

life sparks

listening to: Be Like the Water (Indigo De Souza), Addictions (Lucy Dacus), Silk Chiffon (MUNA), Writer in the Dark (Lorde), Free (Broods)

reading: Ophelia After All (thanks Faith!), Margo’s Got Money Troubles (thanks Liz!), Hard Damage, The Book of Light, Bluff: Poems (thanks Bethany!), The Edge of Sex: Navigating a Sexually Confusing Culture from the Margins

watching: Mississippi Masala, Moonstruck, But I’m a Cheerleader, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Really Love, Dirty Dancing, Beyond the Lights, The Same Difference, B-Boy Blues, Timer, Secretary, Subjects of Desire, The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye, this deeply affirming comedy reel on anxious attachment (thanks Liz!)

doing: pole class, somatic experiencing, lakeshore sunsets

creative themes: trauma as tender container, self-righteous sobriety and conflicted celibacy, vulnerability of desire

learn about each other

ask me an anonymous (or not) question and I’ll respond in the next email <3