What Now…

Ah, friends. It’s been… something. I haven’t posted a poem since September 12. Haven’t posted here in weeks. The truth is… I’ve barely thought to do so. Life has been full in surprising and spiritual ways. The fall equinox has come and gone, and today’s full moon energy has my heart extra jigging. I decorated the porch and front yard with seasonal fare, including hanging a cute witch flag. She’s flying wild. I’m feeling the pull of hunkering down, of nesting, of quiet-ing… and I’m responding with yes, yes, yes.

And also, I’m toiling, my dears. I’m toiling with my parts. There are so many. Alive and well and pushy and patient. You know, there is much talk about how being a teenager is a human’s toughest time concerning growth and change, but living through peri-menopause, seeing age fifty around the corner, I’m certain that these changes I’m in are, indeed, more intense, more existential, more hormonal than they were when I was fourteen and yearning for blood, boobs and boys.

I yearn now for the blood to end (with gratitude), for my hormones to settle so I can give them the attention they need when the hullaballoo is complete. My boobs, well, they’re great. And my boys are the loves of my life. Thing is… time is the thing that feels most like a entity that flips and flops my mind, my dreams, my worries, my choices. The darkness isn’t creeping in, it’s open-armed, inviting, a deviation from the chaos.

There is so much time now, with the kids not kids anymore. Out in the world, working, learning, playing, traveling. I find myself standing in the living room, tears streaming down my cheeks, not knowing what to do with myself. But it’s a grand fallacy for this is always so much to do. But I can’t. Work is like a canyon I’m standing on the threshold of… peering down into the red-rock beauty of creative dreams I can dive into when ever I want… and yet, I don’t feel like diving or even like reaching in. It’s like all I can do is stare, sometimes in awe, sometimes in fear, sometimes baffled. Actually, I feel baffled a lot.

This website, this blog, this nano-space on the world-wide-web is filled to its maximum with media. Is this a sign? Is this a crossroads? I’ve had ‘get new website’ on my to-do list for months. I’ve been contemplating the shift into a website that has ‘woo commerce’ (woo? how utterly witchy… and yet, and yet, where is the magic here?) so I can manage all of my books, in all the formats, and control the sales, the marketing, the offerings… in one fell swoop of a site. I like the control of it. But really, the internet, social media is out of control. And I’ve felt such relief not being on it… but I do miss this. This space for me to ‘blog’ out my brains, my blistering mind-chatter. Parts of me want to keep this aspect of the website alive too. The blogging, the sharing, the poetry, the contemplations. But it’s messing with my other parts.

Is a website, a blog, a safer more belonging space for me? I still can’t and don’t want to be on Facebook. The bully is actively aggressing on it… and others too. Instagram… when I go to my account, I scroll through all the photos, and think, who is this person? I see things I need to fix, but I don’t know how. I check my follower amount. I check my posts amount. I slid over 2000 posts 135 posts ago. Two thousand seems like a lot. I feel heat in my stomach as the comparison monster lifts its hairy shoulders, and pushes on the back of my heart to do more, post more, start doing reels, for goddess sake. Ideas of how to make a viral impact run through my brain like zaps of lightening. This morning’s idea: @motherfears. An account dedicated to all the fears I have each day. Me, in videos, #irl, talking about what terrifies me today. Surely, that would go viral? All the mothers out there wading in the thick muck of All The Things That Can Kill Our Children. It’s ludicrous. This part of me that feels a very real need to be seen by millions of people. To have that kind of attention. Why?

One of the mothers I follow on Instagram, she’s an influencer, with millions of followers. She just announced a book deal. Several influencers have had this opportunity. Social media, with its measured, qualitative proof that will ‘sell books’ is a publisher’s goldmine. Even if the person has never written a thing or wanted to. Even if they have… In a ‘reel’ (real?) I heard a writer sharing about not getting a publishing deal because she ‘didn’t have a strong enough social media platform’, yet she’d been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and other major outlets where *millions* of people read her work. The audience is there, but not directly connected to her own personal socials. She was devastated, confused, baffled.

How does an artist (maker/writer/painter/filmmaker/musician/etc.) manage her internal value-system when the external space for presentation of the art is an intangible space where people from anywhere and everywhere react (most react, few pause and respond) in ways that can literally cancel her voice, her story, her heart? Or, if people from anywhere and everywhere react in ways that lift her voice, her story, heart? I’m just… I’m tired of thinking about all these things. And this little breather away… it’s helping me deal with Everything Thing Else. With the the emotions and day-to-day joys and pains. Things I want and need to handle with my head and my heart.

So, as I create a new website, as I nest and purge and journal and read and cry and laugh… and be… I will hopefully see out at literary events. Or somewhere out in the world where we can lean in for a squeeze. The Heart Tour continues with events in October, plus I also have two girlfriend getaways that I’m very excited about. Friendships, especially with my soul sisters, really are the bed for my jumping on!

I’m not sure when I’ll start a poem a day again… Maybe it won’t happen again for the rest of the year. Maybe it will. Ha! We’ll see.

Next up… are these events which I’d love to see you at!