Hullo! Happy weekend!

The Kickstarter for Dear Daughter is going strong. We are 72% funded and just need another 11 people to buy a copy of the zine to reach our goal! Pre-order (or re-order) a copy today! (I’ve heard of many people who have given away their original copies of the zine over the year. <3)

(If you’re in the Seattle area, there’s an event highlight at the end of this newsletter.)

Today, I wanted to 1) share a few images from the zine itself, 2) inhabit that “Dear Beloved” voice + channeling that made this project so special and so timeless throughout the years, and 3) talk a bit about fear, which has been on my mind a lot! This image below is one of the central ones I always think of when I think of this “Dear Daughter” project. Because it was one of the messages that has served me the most and most often in the intervening years. But/and the message felt like it wanted an addendum ~10 years on, in this neverending-seeming year of 2025.

On Fear, in 2025

Dear beloved,

Ten years ago, I told you that I hope you always follow the kind of fear that means you are growing, because change will always feel uncertain and because change will always cause a reaction in your body that may be uncomfortable — even change that you have chosen, or that you desire, or that is ultimately positive for your life and character. But I do want to acknowledge that there is a different kind of fear permeating the air these days. I want to acknowledge that so many of the changes that are happening right now feel outside of your control.

I know that you have been caught in fear’s buzzing net a lot this year, driven by anxiety, frozen against the speed of change and collapse and danger all around you. I know it’s hard to decipher safety vs security, privilege vs alarm, truth vs story. Many things are true at once.

Honestly, I wish we had told you more of our stories, shared more of the rituals and routines and mindsets and songs that got us through our wars and our collapses and our overwhelm as we fled and fled and fled again. Because we survived calamities too. Maybe you have already picked up on some of our survival skills through cultural osmosis. Maybe you even resent some of the adaptations that we passed along implicitly, epigenetically, or unknowingly.

Or maybe you are only as strong as you are now because of your years of protected innocence — what some may deride as naïvete — thinking history was past and that your generation wasn’t going to have to face everything your generation will have to face.

Or maybe I am proud — envious even — of your stubbornness about staying present to the horrors of modernity because I couldn’t for many years. For many years, I just couldn’t.

Many things are true at once. It comes in waves. It’s okay if you dip in and out. I certainly did.

Here is what I do know: You are starting to feel the difference in your body between different kinds of fear. The fear that paralyzes you is an anxious buzzing in the back of your neck at the base of your skull, whispering cruel little lies to you about your loneliness or your powerlessness or your lack of everything you need.

You are learning how to be with that kind of fear, how to reassure her. By: going outside, lying on the ground, shaking it all out, or screaming with the trees. Or just simply waiting her out, breathing with her, letting her know you see her. You are learning to notice the patterns that arise for you when you are afraid: the scenario planning, the spreadsheets, the avoidance and the escapism, the rage that has nowhere to go but inward, the 10-mile stare. You are learning that you can move through these reactions without having to destabilize your entire life. You are learning that you don’t have to make any big decisions while you are consumed in this state of fear. You are learning that you can always feed yourself and put yourself to bed.

You are starting to feel the difference between this back-of-the-skull anxiety fear and that other kind of tingling, the nerves that accompany you when you are taking a risk and stretching yourself — socially after so-many-pandemic-years, or creatively after so-much-playing-small, or politically after so-much-rule-following. These nerves often come with a tittering giggle, or a slanting irrepressible smile. This kind of fear seems to move energy outwards, through your heart and limbs, towards your goals, instead of stymieing you or curling you inward. A dare instead of a blow.

Sometimes the actions look the same from the outside: spreadsheets, scenario planning, rage. But the breath feels different, no?

I’m still learning these somatic differences myself, in my body, in my old age. I’d love to hear how they play out in yours. Maybe there are similar echoes, maybe they are completely different metaphors. What’s important is the noticing, is the learning. There is never ‘too late’ a time to share these stories, the rituals, the things that got us through. You are teaching me as well. We can teach each other.

Love,
Christina

P.S. I know, I can’t believe it’s spelled ‘stymieing’ either.

A few other Kickstarter notes before I say goodnight <3

A zine friend caught the fact that you couldn’t add-on book bundles to the workshop reward tier. I semi-fixed it, so that you can add the workshop as an add-on to the base book reward tier — if you are someone who wants to order both additional zine bundles and attend the workshop in January. (LOL, I hope that makes sense.)

I am also considering ways to offer some lottery/scholarship/sliding-scale tickets to the January letterwriting workshop if we reach funding on the Kickstarter. In my head, it’s a stretch goal. But let’s make it to the $555 first!!

Lastly, if any iteration of this project has meant something to you in the past decade, and you’re able to think of someone who might resonate with the project, can you do me a favor and share the Kickstarter link with them or forward them one of these emails? One goal of this new crowdfunding campaign is to reach a few new hearts who haven’t seen this project before. Like I said in the last one, I trust that these archives and that these messages will find who they need to find, when they need to find them. <3

Seattle event! “Dear Daughter” at Common Objects WHISPERING THE FUTURE Popup Bookstore

There will be some limited-edition Dear Daughter zines, alongside some copies of Love by Many Shapes and Aging, available at the “Whispering the Future” Popup Bookstore at Common Objects in Seattle, WA this November.

Curated by Ching-In Chen and Noor Alnaaz Islam: “This popup bookshop features the work of artists and writers who [knit] [tangle] [feed] [dream] future possibilities [through words, image, hands, and connection.] Some work with tools of the past, some create completely new [communities] [locations] of syntax, hybridity, body and belonging, some bring the knowledge of their ancestors into the present, all inventing technologies and ways of [caring for us all] into the future.”

“Themes: Speculative fiction, scifi, handcraft, clay poetry, food, community, ekphrastic, call and response. attention, the handmade, inventing/inhabiting our collective past/present/futures, love and care for trans communities.”

Check out the pop-up and the associated events Nov 10 - 23, 2025 if you’re in the Seattle area!

That’s all for today.

Sending love,
Christina