News — real life

Anticipation is a weird one for me, at least when it comes to “things on the calendar” that relate to other people. Especially during this pandemic!  It has been painful to make and hope for plans based on dips in the numbers, only to have a new variant rise and send things back into a spin again.  Still, I find myself anticipating a few things. The flowers of spring and early summer. Poppies, lilac, bachelor buttons, tulips, and crocus. Herbs and sweet snap peas. I love walking through the neighborhoods around our home in the PNW, seeing the blooms in people’s...

One of my favorite books may be Anne Lamotte's "Help, Thanks, Wow". When I think about the kind of help I myself find myself asking for it's typically asking for support and for sustenance through the awful. Praying for little bits of grace or peace, for rest, for strength to get through one more moment. I've definitely experienced a lot of that in the last couple of years.So today I really am holding my hope and prayer around the people of Ukraine as they fight for their country and for their independence against Putin's invasion. As their faces and pictures and videos fill my phone screen and little bits of...

Wow it's been a minute! I haven't posted here since last February. Kids, I'll be honest. 2019 has not been gentle with us. This has not been a particularly kind year. We were financially gutted by our move to Portland which meant that Cap needed to be in Los Angeles and back to work pretty much immediately after our move. I started (and then quit) a very high-stress job across the river in Vancouver. Depression and extreme anxiety were pretty much my constant companions in the first half of the year. We lost my father-in-law to a miserable and prolonged illness...

I was talking to a friend today and she asked how I was doing. I started to say "oh, fine." as you do, but other words spilled out instead. Shitty. Sad. Depressed. Isolated. Anxious, having panic attacks. Hadn’t been out of the house in 3 days. Agoraphobia in full swing. As yet (today) unshowered, unfed, uncombed, unmedicated. Guilty about not being in the studio. No motivation. No spark. Skies are grey and the rain seems never-ending. The holidays are over and spring seems like a long way off.  Can I just say, it’s nice to have friends who will hold...