Poetry

Here’s Lucille Clifton’s “why some people be mad at me sometimes,” a poem I’ve always thought incredibly relevant for writers of memoir and personal essays.

Journeying

My family did not take vacations. We took Sunday drives.  After church, my mom, younger sister, and I changed out of our dress shoes (no heels until you’re twelve), peeled off pantyhose or tights, removed skirts and requisite slips.  Put on jeans, t-shirts, and tennies.  My stepfather changed too, no more tie or blazer. Then we climbed into the “green beast,” a 1970 Ford station wagon with a dark green and wood paneled exterior that my grandfather had given my mom, and went looking for farmhouses.  

After she married my stepdad, my mom sold the two bedroom Dutch colonial my grandfather had helped her purchase and moved us into my stepfather’s house.  It was bigger, had three bedrooms, four if you counted the makeshift bunk room in the basement next to the giant shell of the coal burning furnace.  This house also had a roof that leaked in more places than we had buckets. Its windows rattled in their frames. The upstairs toilet leaked through the floor into the dining room.

But we weren’t looking for a house with less holes. We were following my mom in her search for safety. After a childhood spent helpless in the face of my grandfather’s rage, the same man who gave her the green beast and helped her buy a house, my mother believed refuge lived in a white clad farmhouse down a dirt road. My stepfather, who grew up with the fists and belts kind of violence and had learned to fight back, didn’t need my mother’s version of protection. But my mother’s fear made her persuasive, and he had the skills, if not the funds, to make the imagined habitable.

Our central Illinois college town was surrounded by corn and soybean fields. From the backseat, my sister and I searched for the white peaked roofs of houses sunk deep in corn. We kept our eyes out for abandoned ones. Houses that looked like they wouldn’t cost very much if the owner decided to sell.

We’d pull into the shadow of a driveway. Hop out, doors slamming in the quiet. The grown-ups would try to find a way inside. Often the farmhouse windows had lost their glass or a backdoor was off its hinges, requiring just a little maneuvering to dislodge.  Sometimes there was no door, and we walked right in. Often, while we waited for my stepfather to climb in a window or jog a door loose, my sister and I would run into the tall grass of what used to be the yard toward the line of crops never far away.  Our fear wasn’t as sharp there.  The quiet cushioned us.  We didn’t worry so much about someone discovering us breaking into their house, about their anger, about my stepfather getting arrested.

In one house, all the window glass had disappeared, but my stepfather said the cupboards in the kitchen were “well-built.”  My mother said she loved them because they were old and had character. The four of us stared at the block of shelves and swinging doors wrenched from the wall but suspended midair thanks to a couple nails left like the last two teeth in an otherwise empty mouth. We stepped around the gaps in the floorboards, no basement in this house, just a crawlspace we could see beneath our feet.  The bathroom had a clawfoot tub, and one wall covered in the brown skeleton of a vine.  We looked into the toilet and found not water, but a recently dead blackbird, feet up, like someone had tried to dry flush it.  

My stepfather started up the stairs.

“Chuck,” my mother’s voice had a warning in it.

“Martha?” a playful reply laced with defiance.

“I just don’t want you to fall through, honey.”

I listened to the tightness in my mother’s voice. When I looked at her, I saw what could be, a man falling through the stairs onto the hard dirt floor of the crawlspace. My stepfather exhaled, backed down the steps.

At another house, we found the same peeling siding, broken entrances and exits, rooms full of plaster and cracked boards.  This house had an outside basement entrance covered with warped white doors.  My mom said, “This could be a root cellar!” as my stepfather hauled open a door.  The cellar was full to the second step down with black water.  

My mom, sister, and I toured these homes and planned.  We’d plant the garden where there was the most sunlight, between the house and the barn with the collapsing roof.  We’d plant enough tomatoes to can sauce, cucumbers for pickles. We would save carrots in buckets of sand and potatoes in crates on the dry root cellar floor.  We would sew calico cafe curtains for the kitchen windows.  Maybe we would even have a wood cook stove that would funnel heat to the bedrooms above, where we would sleep under down comforters on bitter nights. My stepfather had different plans, his included lists of building materials and where to get them for free.

I don’t think they ever contacted a realtor or went for a drive with someone who had legal access to these properties. My stepfather had filed for bankruptcy the year before he met my mom. No one would have given them a loan. Still, did they believe they could make a life out of missing floorboards and shattered glass? Each Sunday, standing inside another broken doorway, waiting for the dust to settle, we did.  On Sundays, we believed it.

Gardening and Making/Mending will be back in the next newsletter. Here’s a peek at what’s been happening:

Upcoming on Threshold: A Mystery Topic

Yes, you read that right. The next topic is a surprise. Not to worry, I can assure that it is in keeping with our theme of how to live in life’s grey areas. Join and me Monday, June 15 at 11:00am CT.

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All recordings are available here.

Poetry

"Praise the Rain"
By Joy Harjo

Praise the rain; the seagull dive
The curl of plant, the raven talk—
Praise the hurt, the house slack
The stand of trees, the dignity—
Praise the dark, the moon cradle
The sky fall, the bear sleep—
Praise the mist, the warrior name
The earth eclipse, the fired leap—
Praise the backwards, upward sky
The baby cry, the spirit food—
Praise canoe, the fish rush
The hole for frog, the upside-down—
Praise the day, the cloud cup
The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we're led.
Praise the roads on earth and water.
Praise the eater and the eaten.
Praise beginnings; praise the end.
Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Journeying

My bare toes grip the ground like a bird fists a branch. The earth is damp with last night’s rain, the grass soft. I feel the scrape of a tiny twig on the sole of my foot. My eyes are closed. We are supposed to be feeling, listening, smelling, noticing the green around us without the help of sight. But all I can manage is a death grip on the ground.

The ground at this retreat center in eastern Iowa is not ordinary. It’s the product of thirty years of healing and care by a handful of Franciscan nuns who decided to create an eco-spirituality center in Iowa in the early 90’s. Talk about visionary. In a state dominated by monocropping and pesticide use with the lowest amount of protected public acreage in the country and some of the worst water quality numbers, this center is a literal oasis for wildlife, plants, insects, and people, who’ve forgotten or never known what wild is.

This ground can hold me. It can give me what I need. I’m just not sure what that is.

—

A few days before, I’d navigated hallways, elevators, and the serenity garden at the cancer hospital, trying to find the infusion center. I wasn’t getting chemo. I was getting a shot to paralyze my ovaries. I will continue to receive this shot every three months, until my ovaries surrender and stay still on their own. The windows in the clinic room covered two-thirds of the wall space. I curled up on the bench beside them, unwilling to occupy the recliner-like chair used for infusions. I leaned into the light and waited.

A tiny older woman entered the room. She introduced herself, face masked to avoid compromising patients’ fragile immune systems. She prepared the injection, which was subcutaneous, and the pre-injection numbing medication, another shot. The lidocaine went in without pain, but the injection made me feel like a human punch card. The nurse said, “I know honey, I know,” as she pressed on my belly to insert the medication. Afterwords, I had to put my head between my knees. The nurse rubbed my back. I told her that next time, I’d need to eat something before I came. She said, “one thing at a time.”

—

Around a campfire on the second evening of the retreat, I share a small portion of my cancer story. The woman next to me puts her hand on my shoulder. I turn to her in thanks. She says, “do you believe that healing is happening in you and around you?” I thought, “No. I believe I have to do the next hard thing, until this is over.” Then I said, “Now, I do.”

On the next and final morning, it rains. We’re outside. I listen to the tap, tap of water on the hood of my raincoat. I feel cold splashes on the palms of my outstretched hands. I’m barefoot again. The spongy earth gives way and springs back beneath my feet. We’ve just finished a QiGong practice for grief. I’ve got plenty of that. Water seeps through my old raincoat. Sadness drips down my back; my hands are wet with it. The earth washes my feet with her tears.

I open my eyes. The sky has lightened, the rain become mist. I take a deep breath and lower my hands. Everything in me relaxes, even my toes.

Gardening and Making/Mending

The peonies were kind of puny this year, not many blooms. I didn’t plant these two bushes with their identical pink flowers. I don’t know how old they are. Do I need to deadhead them, fertilize? I may do the former as I enjoy lopping off and neatening (within certain parameters that don’t extend, for example, to mowing my field of a backyard). I won’t fertilize though, at least, not this year. My daughter and I planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and innumerable flower seeds this week. We also planted a few annuals in pots. I put chicken wire around the cucumbers and the borage. The groundhog loves them. Chicken wire is both a nemesis and a necessity. It’s unwieldy, and its edges are sharp. It must be secured around the plants with landscape staples, which eventually work their way out of the ground and must be shoved back in place. One is constantly molding warped wire back into a functional shape with varying degrees of success and many scrapes and cuts. But it does allow me, when I’m lucky, to have cucumbers on my summer salads.

My knitting has experienced an uptake, partly, because I didn’t knit for several weeks, so any knitting would be considered an increase, and partly, because I seem to want to finish projects and start others. I don’t always feel this way. Most of the time, I just knit and knit without much thought of completion. In fact, when I finally do finish something, I’m often surprised at the resulting object, “A sweater! A hat!” But right now, I’d really like to finish this pair of socks I’ve been knitting for my partner so that I can work on the hat I started for my daughter, which will then allow me to begin another hat for myself. There’s logic here somewhere.

And finally, finally, I have completed the giveaway item for the quarterly A Thin Space Handmade Item Raffle: two “mug warmers.” These knitted cozies will keep your favorite drink warm (or maybe cool as well? Physics is not my strong suit). I knit them to fit standard sized mugs. One is slightly larger than the other, for those like me, who like their beverages on the bigger side. Both close with buttons.

Thank you to all of my paid subscribers, who support me here. I am grateful. And without further verbiage, the winner is:

Nadia B!

Nadia, I’ll be in touch for your address and information about shipping.

Upcoming on Threshold: Does Everything Happen for a Reason? The Role of Meaning Making in Our Lives

Humans make meaning. We search for our purpose; when something painful happens we want to know why; when happiness comes we want to find a way to keep it. Sometimes having a reason for an event helps us feel safe, like our life is under control. But so much of life doesn’t work that way, or the meaning seems to change. Join Emily and Julia as we discuss the roll of meaning making in our lives.

Join Here

Welcome to Field Notes, a monthly video reflection for paid subscribers. In these videos, I share an idea and a reflection that might be helpful to you on your human journey, wherever you find yourself at the moment.

If you’d like, let me know in the comments your thoughts on what I talk about hear. I love to hear your stories and am grateful fo…

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Poetry

Last week, my friend BR sent me this. I didn’t know how much I needed it:

Journeying

Things I have done in the last week instead of write:

• Made a grasshopper pie. Do you know this pie. If you’re over fifty (forty?) you may remember this melted marshmallow and Crème de menthe concoction with a cookie crust.

• Made a chocolate cream pie. Everybody knows what that is. The pies were for my twin sons’ twenty-first birthday. It’s a big one.

• Worked on The World of Virginia Woolf puzzle my kids got me two Christmases ago. This is my second go at it. The pieces are the annoying kind that all sort of fit everywhere, except that they don’t because then the puzzle would look more like the business end of a kaleidoscope than a coherent picture of Monk’s House and Orlando lounging on the lawn.

• Knit, a little bit. My elbow is improving, but I’m prioritizing its use. Swimming comes before knitting.

• Moved. Lifted weights, swam, ran, did yoga and a tiny bit of QiGong. The idealized Emily does QiGong everyday.

• Moved, in a second sense of the word. Hauled plastic bins, big, blue IKEA bags, and a plant out of my daughter’s dorm room to the just-big-enough-car. Then lugged all of it, in reverse order, to the house, where it still sits, filling the entry way and spilling out of her bedroom.

• Planted cutting flower seeds. Pink, coral, orange, and yellow cosmos; “whirligig” zinnias, “Benary’s Giant” zinnias, “cupcake” zinnias; two different sunflower mixes; yellow and orange Mexican sunflowers; two different strawflower mixes, a primary color mix and a pastel color mix (I’ve not grown strawflowers before. The newness makes me nervous).

• Watered seeds. We are in a drought. Weeds do not grow in the garden beds. Grass grows, then stops. Seeds do not sprout without the assistance of a hose.

• Watched. My three children fill this small house with their bodies, their face and hair products, their Xboxes, their laundry.

• Moved, in the second sense of the word. My office (my computer, day-timer, phone, and yoga blocks - to prop up the computer so that my neck does not get sore) upstairs to my bedroom for sanctuary from said children, whose bodies I love but whose stuff and noise I must escape.

• Mowed. The knee high grass in the backyard, which I had, the day before, determined to leave in its field-like state, until I spotted a groundhog munching the Golden Alexander in the back flowerbed and remembered that groundhogs like long grass. I like groundhogs, their fuzzy throw rug resembling bodies, their slow rolling gait, the way they poke their noses out of the holes they dig under my porch, my front walkway. But I do not like their appetite for my plants.

• Worried. About the sore spot under my right arm that is probably scar tissue and not a cancerous lymph node that managed to escape the surgeon and the radiation machine. About the side effects of the hormone inhibitors I will begin in two weeks. About the upcoming shot that will put my ovaries to sleep. About my life expectancy.

• Worried. About the strain several years of “major life stressors” has put on my partner and my relationship.

• Worried. About the drought. About the too warm May temperatures. About climate change.

• Worried. About the impetus behind a ballroom, an unnaturally blue reflecting pool, a gold statue.

• Worried. About my worry.

• Said, metaphorically, “to hell with it,” while squatting to plant sunflower seeds in the dry ground of the grass strip between sidewalk and street. “I’ll just live.”

• Read through this list.

• Realized I am.

An update on the A Thin Space Handmade Item Raffle. It’s coming. Since I wrote this, my elbow has returned to normal, which means I’ll announce the giveaway winner in my next newsletter, May 29th.

For those not familiar with the raffle, each quarter, I give away a made-by-me item to one randomly drawn paid subscriber. Previous items include a scarf, some coasters, and an “emotional support chicken.” If you’d like to become a paid subscriber (or any kind of subscriber you choose), you can do that below.

Upcoming on Threshold: Being With What’s Unresolved

Humans like a trajectory. We like to know if we’re at the beginning, middle, or end of a project. We like to know where we “stand” in a relationship. But what happens when the map or spreadsheet of your life gets lost or burned or tossed? How can we, as Rilke says, “live the questions”? Join Julia and Emily as we discuss ways of being with what’s unresolved. Monday, May 18th at 11:00am CT.

Join Here

Poetry

Here’s a Rilke poem from his Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. I talked about this poem in the latest edition of “Field Notes,” a monthly video diary for paid subscribers. In case you missed it, here’s a link to the latest one. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, I believe you can view the video by using the 7 Day Free Trial option.

Journeying

I return from a trip to Chicago, and realize that the Korean viburnum’s blooms came and went while I was gone. Three years ago, I planted this bush in our side yard. Its clusters of soft pink flowers resemble those of the Hoya, hanging in my dining room window, but with a much lighter, less syrup-like scent. I was only away four nights. How could I have missed the blooms? In Omaha, Nebraska, people like to say that we have one week of spring. The weather generally stays cold, or vacillates wildly from eight degrees to eighty, before settling abruptly into hot. The plants follow the weather’s lead. They bloom, leaf out, sprout all at once. The shift is almost violent.

My emotions are like a Nebraska spring. In early December last year, I learned that I had stage 2 breast cancer. A huge surprise, as I am otherwise very healthy. I exploded. The prognosis and treatment frightened me; I was angry that I’d been diagnosed when I work so hard to exercise and eat well; sad that I might not meet prospective grandchildren.

As I progressed through innumerable appointments and, many, often painful, tests, my mind flew like a terrified bird caught inside a convenience store, crashing into windows and merchandise in a frantic attempt to get out. But I couldn’t escape my circumstances. No amount of magical thinking would help me locate the door or calm my emotions. So I tried a different tactic.

I let myself feel. When I got angry, I felt it. Sometimes I yelled and screamed. Lying in bed before sleep, terrified that the next scan would turn up something new, I inhaled and exhaled, breathing through the fear. My emotions came in waves, like contractions. They doubled me over. Then they passed, leaving behind exhaustion, but also, space. An odd kind of vacant peace.

I kept it up. Through a double mastectomy and five weeks of radiation. I continue as I look toward years of drug therapy and its side effects.  

My frantic mind hasn’t stopped. It’s still heaving itself against the walls of the local Casey’s mini-mart. But I’m less concerned about it than I used to be. Despite their strength, I’m also less concerned about the emotions. What interests me more is the gap, the space that opens between the end of one feeling and the beginning of another. The pause where even the mind quiets. Turns out, I can direct my attention there too. I can drag my lawn chair out amongst the debris left from the last hailstorm and have a seat. I can watch the clouds move quickly overhead, as they often do after a big storm. I can listen for when the birds start to sing again.

Today, I noticed the snowball bush, another kind of viburnum, planted at the corner of our front porch. It’s laden with green clusters of what will become the white globes that give the plant its nickname. Its blooms last several weeks. I’ll be here for them.

Gardening and Making/Mending

I’m back at it. After a couple of weeks abstaining from the garden so that the temperatures could warm, and my spring cleaning wouldn’t disturb any still hibernating creatures, I’ve returned. I’m pulling the chickweed that’s doing its best to take over the perennial beds, lopping off last year’s dead stalks, piling said stalks into one of two compost heaps, planting hyssop and calendula, they like an early start, and not mowing, even though the grass is a foot tall in spots and inching skyward from the recent rain. I enjoy the prairie-esque look of my urban yard during these few weeks when the dandelions and chickweed (as long as it’s not in one of the garden beds) grow tall to support the many insects emerging after winter. The feral cats like it too. The two kittens born during the winter have grown up. They bound through the long grass chasing butterflies and each other. The woodchuck has made an appearance. He samples the tender new columbine leaves. Experience reminds me that he is also partial to sunflowers. Luckily, a carpet of them have sprouted around the bird feeders. I let them grow, hoping they distract him from the columbine. I have plenty of plans for the season to come, but in this moment, I am happy to both nurture and neglect.

I have a sore elbow. It’s a combination of tennis and golfer’s, neither of which I have played. Sometimes swimming irritates this joint; sometimes knitting is the culprit, and I have to stop, stretch, and wait. This means that the quarterly A Thin Space Handmade Item Raffle will also have to wait a couple of weeks. You can see a portion of the next giveaway surprise here. I can tell you that it is not what it looks like, a very small scarf, but something a good bit more useful (although that depends on who’s wearing the scarf, I suppose).

For those not familiar with the raffle, each quarter, I give away a made-by-me item to one randomly drawn paid subscriber. Previous items include a scarf, some coasters, and an “emotional support chicken.” If you’d like to become a paid subscriber (or any kind of subscriber you choose), you can do that below.

Upcoming on Threshold: Quirky? Neurospicy? Artistic?

NOTE: Threshold is on vacation next week, May 4. Please join and me on May 11 at 11am for our next podcast.

You’re a creative person. How do you understand your uniqueness? Many people find a label helpful but some find them confining. How does understanding the range of human expression in terms of labels impact our relationships with each other? Join us for a tangy conversation about spiciness. NOTE: We’re not going to debate the diagnoses or labels. Instead, we’re going to discuss how we understand our own idiosyncrasies.

I’m writing to you from an Amtrak train headed east across Iowa to Chicago. The train sways, and my fingers try to catch the keys. The car is surprisingly quiet. Passengers watch movies on their phones, work on their laptops, read. They move carefully up and down the aisle, then step aside with an, “excuse me” to let each other pass. A few minutes ago, an older man in a black hoodie moved out of the way of a younger man, also wearing a hoodie. The older guy whispered, “sorry, buddy,” to which the younger man replied, “That’s o.k. I’m used to it. I’ve been on here for days.” Days? I check the Amtrak app on my phone. Turns out, you can ride this train from San Francisco to Chicago.

I can hear the muffled sound of tracks, scraping and clacking. When the horn sounds, it seems far away, disembodied. I look down into the woods outside my window and spot deer trails through the greening underbrush. Then woods become fields. It’s too early for planting and water lies in the low spots. Some of the farmhouses have tarps for roofs, missing siding. The cars parked in yards look to be in better shape than the houses. The conductor announces the stops, reminds us that they will be short, “only three minutes in Galesburg,” says the voice. The smokers line up to exit the train for the allotted time. A bald eagle flies low across a pond. The young woman in front of me gives a surprised, “Oh, wow!”

A train ride is liminal, neither here nor there, and therefore, an excellent backdrop for this week’s newsletter, where I want to ask you about what you’d like to see here in the future.

Would you like for everything to stay the same: personal essays, gardening, making, mending, poetry? Would you like more of one than the other? Would you like me to lean into written pieces with less story and more prompts and practices? Last Friday, I sent a short video reflection to my paid subscribers that I thought might be helpful, or at least, interesting to them, on their own human journey. I plan to do these short posts through the month of April (there’s a new one after the paywall here) and continue them, if people enjoy them. Would you like to see more offerings like this one for paid/free subscribers? Do you have another wonderful idea that is not currently a part of the newsletter?

I know, so many questions!

To help make this easier for you and me, please take the first A Thin Space poll.

If you chose “something else,” please leave a comment or send me an email with your idea.

I’ve been writing this newsletter for something close to three years, and I appreciate each of you and your presence here. I am also grateful for your help in taking the pulse of this newsletter. One way or the other, there will be more to come!

Upcoming on Threshold: Marking New Beginnings

According to the calendar, Spring is here! This week and I will be discussing fresh starts and new intentions. How do you begin something new? Do you do it with ritual, with lists, with celebration? Is it important to mark these occasions? Join us Monday, April 20 at 11:00 am CT as we discuss our new beginnings.

Join Here

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Welcome to Field Notes. During the month of April, I’ll be doing short weekly video reflections for my paid subscribers. In these videos, I share an idea and a reflection that might be helpful to you on your human journey, wherever you find yourself at the moment. Please let me know in the comments or via email, if you enjoy these or find them he…

Read more

Poetry

Here’s Mary Oliver’s “What is There Beyond Knowing?”

Journeying

“The way I see it, each person’s understanding of the spiritual could fit in a thimble,” she says. “And each person has their own thimble.”  I think of the black lacquer sewing box at home in Omaha.  It belonged to my great-grandmother.  In it is her thimble, her initials engraved on the inside. I imagine myself holding this thimble, my great-grandmother’s, now my own.  It’s full to the tiny brim with water, like the limits of my own understanding, not just about the spiritual, a nebulous word, but about life itself. 

For a week, I live at the edge of the Pacific ocean. The Villa Maria Del Mar retreat center overlooks Monterey Bay.  My room is south facing with a view over the water.  I open the window first thing and close it as my last act before heading home.  All night the waves rise and fold and fall.  They lap me, rock me, hold me.  

During the day, I’m busy facilitating a retreat.  We talk about and practice stillness.  But I don’t feel still.  I’m preparing and presenting.  In my free time, I’m catching up, hiking, visiting a bookstore.  I visit my room for fifteen-minute stints of quiet.  I listen to the ocean.  Then I’m up and out again, lanyard swinging around my neck, a piece of chocolate on its way to my mouth.  

On the second day of the retreat, I decide to get in the ocean.  The water temperature is such that the only people in it are surfers in full wetsuits. Nevertheless, I am determined. The ocean has rocked and soothed my shredded nervous system every night since I got here.  I need to get closer.  My friend M gets wind of my plan and hints that she might join me.  We meet on the beach, both of us bouncing with fear and excitement.  I remove the thick orange towel borrowed from the retreat center, bare legs registering the shock of wind and sun.  Months have passed since they felt either. M and I take deep breaths and turn to the ocean. The water rolls towards us.  It’s a cocktail of ice, salt, and sand.  It flings itself at us. We scream, shout and let the water engulf us, let the tide scoop us up and carry us back to shore.  Once there, our bodies buzzing with more than cold, we realize one dip isn’t enough.  We turn and run to the ocean, over and over again, until our numb limbs, finally, steer us toward dry land and hot showers.

I return home to an ocean of grass netted with snow.  An inland sea.  I return to my life, where, mostly, I just stand in the dark and listen to the sound of my breath.  I hold my thimble, one hand cupped to shelter it from the wind.  The tide’s coming in.  I can hear the rush of all that I do not know.  It swirls around my ankles, covers my feet.  A ruthless benediction. 

Gardening and Making/Mending

By the time this newsletter arrives in your inbox, I will have completed my last radiation treatment. Hurray! After five weeks of daily treatments, I’ve gotten to know the radiation techs pretty well. We joke and laugh and catch up with each other, while they line up the blue sharpie marks on my chest with the lights on the radiation machine. What does this have to do with gardening you ask? Well, a couple of days ago one of my favorite techs, a woman about my age with short dark hair, cool tortoiseshell glasses, and a bone dry sense of humor, asked me what I did over the weekend. I told her I’d done some gardening. I had begun to trim back last year’s growth on a number of perennials as well as clear beds of weeds and leaves. When I said this, she replied, “yeah, but I always worry about disturbing the bugs too early.”

Folks, I have been gardening a long time. I should know better. I should know that all the unusually warm weather in March does not mean that the insects gestating beneath winter’s leavings and inside last summers stalks are ready to make their 2026 debut. I should know this. But I wanted dirt under my fingernails; I wanted scrapes and scratches and hangnails from gardening sans gloves. I wanted to kneel on the ground and feel it spongy beneath me. And I did. And now, thanks to my friend with the cool glasses, I’ve stopped. I’ve also apologized to all the tiny insects I might have disturbed (killed!) in my excitement and haste. I’ll be back. But not for another two weeks.

In the meantime, I should be doing some handwork. I’ve got plenty of projects going, and I did manage to finish most of one sock for my partner. There is, of course, the other one left to knit. But right now, reading one word after the other is more appealing than knitting stitch after stitch. All my library holds appeared, as they often do, at the same time. I’m working my way through the most appealing ones and returning a few with some questions as to why I requested them to begin with.

Despite the dearth of handwork, I haven’t forgot our Thin Space Handmade Item Raffle. This is a quarterly giveaway of a handmade-by-me item to one of my paid subscribers. A new item is coming at the end of April, adjust your antenna accordingly to stay tuned.

Upcoming and New

Thank you of the Substack Unfurl and The Spacious Unknown podcast for taking time to chat with me about some of my spiritual journey. Here’s Kat’s description of our time together:

“Emily shares her journey from Evangelical Christianity through trauma, questioning, and her own ‘dark night of the soul’ to an embodied life of presence and self-compassion.”

FULL EPISODE HERE

Threshold: A Live Podcast

Join and me for our next episode.

Spaciousness vs Spaciness: How to Navigate Times of Brain Fog and Overwhelm

Some of our most healthy and creative times are when we’re spacious and open. But at other times, that same spaciousness can slide into spaciness and brain fog. How do you ground yourself when you feel groundless? How can you stay spacious without becoming spacey? Join us on Monday, April 6, at 11:00 CST, as we try to locate the hazy line between these two states.

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