Here

I can hear my grandmother’s exhalations while she sleeps. Breathing for ninety-six years. I’m at their cabin in Bryson City, just a few feet away from my grandparents’ bedroom, sitting at the kitchen table. My older brothers are asleep in the two twin beds next to their room. The sun has yet to rise and I’ve been stealing these early moments to write.

This cabin is a special place. They’re so proud of all the work they put into it since they bought it in 1980. Aside from the logs which line this rectangle, the entire place is practically custom-built, slowly worked on each summer visit. This is the one constant structure in my life since we moved a lot growing up. My brothers and I have been cherishing this weekend with a similar kind of pride to know this place.

Our grandparents were really present throughout our lives and partly raised us. It’s been sweet to be together with them again like we’re kids, and now this time, to give them the care and attention like they gave us. We’re here to acknowledge this simple feat – to be alive together today in gratitude for them and this place. Something I can’t find more words for at the moment.

This is a short and sweet visit, but it feels like returning to the book of my life and turning a page. It has also been a balm to be in the Great Smoky Mountains in the wake of Dolly Parton’s death. Her voice and music fill the air of almost every place we’ve visited. Every day has felt like “Dolly Day.” Rest well, Dolly Parton, the patron saint of living fully.

Now

After much contemplation, I’m beginning Wayfind, a year-long quarterly gathering for new and seasoned grievers who want to practice grief care in community.

Wayfind is intended to carve out enough space for our grief to be felt, nurtured, and explored as it evolves with us. For the next year, I will hold this space and guide those who would like gentle facilitation and shared activity to support living with loss.

The practice group meets 1 October, 19:30-21:30 CET, as well as on 23 December 2026, 25 March, 24 June, and 23 September 2027. Each gathering is inspired by a different theme and includes embodiment exercises, rituals, and art-making, without pressure or expectation.

Anyone is welcome to join once or as needed, but like any good natural medicine, this practice group is designed for committed tending over time.

So I’m telling you here first, very special people subscribed to my newsletter: I would like to invite you to consider committing to intentional practice and join as a member. You can purchase the Wayfind membership and attend all gatherings at a discount. Learn more here and reach out to me with any questions.

Close

Right now, I’m really moved while reading Simone Weil. Her Gravity and Grace is giving me new perspectives from which to cope. “To philosophize is to learn how to die,” as the saying goes.

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane is in my other hand too, but I have to read it slowly because it breaks my heart. Now I’m without words for these devastating floods in Nepal. It’s incomprehensible, but we must try. I have been reframing the unknownable for myself lately, and I have been wanting to share this excerpt from the book with you for a little while now:

“I am thankful for the unknowable field,” wrote Yuvan [Aves]. “It lets me see my paper wasps with wonder everyday. It also lets me see my sister and uncle in some place together in the hereafter, unknowable from here. It grips me with fright sometimes when its field shows me the abysses, the thresholds of the knowable. Death among them – as though life and death were a binary! Then the unknowable field queers that binary, showing so many unknowables as deep as death, in life itself.“

May we continue to discover and value life amongst so much we do not understand.

Steadily,

Staci

PS. I am giving a guided meditation inspired by Charlott Markus’ exhibition Meandering at 30m3 in Amsterdam East on Wednesday, 2 September, 16:00 CET. Let me know if you’d like to follow along remotely, and I’ll send you a Zoom link.